


Tampering with Time is Risky Business

by Athy



Series: Abandoned Plot Bunnies [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Gen, M/M, Time Travel, gryffindor!draco
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-23
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:05:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Athy/pseuds/Athy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco deeply regrets taking the Mark. He's terrified of failure and he cant fix the vanishing cabinet. Then he stumbles across a box that holds the secret to time travel. He goes back to 1st year to try and save his family and earns a loyal friend.</p><p>Part of my series of Abandoned Plot Bunnies.  Story is up for adoption.  Discontinued/Abandoned Story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Welcome to the one of many installments to Athy's Plot Bunny Extravaganza!
> 
> I'll preface this with a warning, that I will quite likely never finish this story. If you are the type of person who just HATES to read unfinished stories, then you'd may as well pass this one by.
> 
> I will state, however, that part of me honestly does plan to come back to this one and keep going at some point. Just no guarantees when that will be, or how far I will get.
> 
> – –
> 
> Timeframe: Initially, just before Christmas break in Year 6 (Half-Blood Prince), then reboot to summer before 1st year.
> 
> Pairing: HP/DM (although, there would be no actual pairing action for a good long while into the fic)
> 
> Tags: Time-travel (yes, again – I've got a thing for time-travel fics), Draco POV, good!Dumbledore, Gryffindor!Draco
> 
> Warnings: Um... none really? It's a time-travel fic so that guarantees some clichés.
> 
> Disclaimer: I am not J K Rowling and I am making no profit from this.
> 
> Summary: It's Draco's sixth year at Hogwarts and he's deeply regretting taking the Dark Mark the summer before. He's miserable and terrified. While in the Room of Requirement trying to mend the broken Vanishing Cabinet he stumbled across a box with details on a rare and forbidden time-travel ritual. He sends himself back to first year, dedicated to getting his life on a better track this time, and saving his family from suffering under the Dark Lord's wrath.

Tampering with Time is Risky Business

Chapter 1

– –

Regret. It had become such an enormously powerful force in the world of Draco Malfoy. Regrets about the choices he had made over the years. Regrets about the choices his  _father_ had made over the years. Regrets about the unfortunate circumstances that had forced his family to cower to the whims of a lunatic almost constantly. Circumstances that had led him to living in fear in his own home.

Fear. Fear of pain, mostly. It was probably the biggest driving force behind all of his regrets, if he were honest with himself. But remorse and guilt also drove some of them – although he would desperately deny it to any who would dare accuse him of it. He was a Slytherin. Slytherin's weren't supposed to feel remorse or guilt for their actions. They were proud of their actions, or they hid them and denied them while secretly reveling in them.

For a Slytherin to change their stance on an issue because of pain was acceptable. That was self preservation – a trait that Slytherin's were well known for. A good Slytherin could thrive in the toughest of environments and make the most of it. Claw their way to the top no matter the challenges that they were faced with. And Malfoys weren't just good Slytherins, they were  _great_.

Or at least, they had been. Now, they seemed to have been reduced to little better than house elves. His father's substantial wealth was actually draining with horrifying speed for the sake of bankrolling the Dark Lord's bid for world domination, while he and his family cowered in terror and groveled at their master's feet, as if hoping for scraps of approval, as if there was  _anything_  that they could hope to do to restore their honor after this mess. Honestly at this point, Draco would be utterly shocked if any of them lived beyond the end of the next year.

Because the Dark Lord was winning. The man was a power-hungry, monstrosity, that fed off of the pain and suffering of others as if it were his life blood.

After his father's failure in the Ministry, it had been  _expected_  that Draco take the Mark and fill his father's vacant spot in the Dark Lord's ranks. He hadn't had a  _choice_  in the matter. Oh no. It was do it, or die. Simple as that. And so Draco had bowed his head, called the hideous serpentine creature his  _master_  and gritted his teeth as his left forearm was flooded with pain he had never before that point experienced and he was branded a slave.

_A Malfoy's bow to no man._

He snorted bitterly in his mind, recalling the words his father had said to him numerous times during his youth.

While his Marking had been the most painful thing he'd experienced in his pampered little life up until that moment, it was certainly not the most painful thing he experienced after it. The Dark Lord seemed to get his jollies off by torturing his followers, and since Lucius was still locked away in Azkaban – no doubt enjoying the vacation since the Dementors were no longer there, and being in the prison meant he wasn't at the mercies of his  _master_  – Draco was left to the whims of the Dark Lord and all of his deep, furious ire in regards to Draco's father's failure.

Draco had been taught to cast the Cruciatus curse – although he'd never quite managed to summon up enough true hate to pull it off very well – but he had never been on the receiving end of the curse until the Dark Lord turned his wand upon Draco and absently sneered the spell as if he could only barely be bothered with it.

Draco had no idea what he could have possibly done at that time to earn the curse. He later realized that nothing had to be done at all for the Dark Lord to turn his wand on his followers. He just  _did it sometimes_. He supposed the man was  _bored_.

Needless to say, the summer between his fifth and sixth years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was the most painful summer he had ever experienced.

But even the knowledge that he would be returning to Hogwarts could not give him reprieve or relief. Because the Dark Lord had given him a task. An impossible task. It was a task intended to fail – Draco knew that. He was no fool. The Dark Lord had absolutely no expectations that Draco could possibly pull of what had been assigned to him, although he was damned well going to try because if... no...  _when_  he failed, he would be at the Dark Lord's mercy once again, and he knew it was at that point that his life would meet it's end.

The task in question was to kill Dumbledore of all people.  _Dumbledore!_  It was utterly ridiculous! The Dark Lord himself couldn't kill Dumbledore! Of course there was another aspect to his task – one that was slightly more possible, although still proving to be remarkably difficult. He was supposed to find a way to get a group of Death Eaters in through the school's wards so they could mount an attack from the inside.

The very idea made Draco ill. The idea of exposing his fellow school mates to the whims of his Aunt Bella, or Fenrir Greyback... They had tried to assuage his fears by pointing out that none of the  _Slytherins_  would be harmed in the attack – they would be warned to stay down in the dungeons and Severus would make sure that they stayed put – but that didn't make Draco feel even the slightest bit better.

He had come to realize that no matter how hard he had tried, over the years, to be just as cold and heartless as his father had tried to train him to be, he had still been coddled by his mother, and found that he really did not have the stomach for all this death and blood. He could be a fine politician someday – assuming of course that he could ever hope to live that long – but watching people that he had attended school with for five years  _die_  before his very eyes and  _because of his actions..._  he just... didn't think he could stand it.

And so he found himself feeling utterly torn and conflicted as he spent every minute of time not in classes or rushing through his classwork desperately trying to find some solution to his tasks, while trying very very hard not to think about the consequences of success.

It was during these desperate efforts to try and find some solution to his imminent doom, that he stumbled across a  _box_. It was in the cluttered mess of a room that he'd moved the broken Vanishing Cabinet into in order to work on fixing it. The room had been used by Potter the previous year for that damned defense group that Draco had jealously wanted to attend, but would have never  _ever_  earned an invite to. Instead he'd ended up on Umbridge's stupid little Inquisitorial Squad. But it was because of that that he'd learned about  _the room_. Umbridge has used some of Snape's Veritaserum on one of the Ravenclaws in the defense club and gotten all of the details about the room out of her. Most specifically the fact that it was called The Room of Requirment and that you could make it into whatever you needed as long as you asked for it properly.

When Draco had requested a room where he could hide something and walked in to discover a cavernous cathedral-type room filled to the brim with mountains upon mountains of _junk_... well, it had been a bit startling and overwhelming. But he had mostly ignored the mess of junk and focused his limited time and effort towards addressing the Vanishing Cabinet. But sometime after Halloween while Draco had been failing to make any progress at all on his task, he had bumped into something-or-another and knocked a blood stained rug off a broken table to reveal an ornately carved wooden box underneath it that seemed to...  _call_  to him.

Generally speaking, Draco knew better than to approach any magical object that seemed to  _call_  to him. His rather impressive skill in Occlumency usually prevented him from being effected by such magics as well, but at this particular moment, he couldn't quite stop himself from bending over and picking the wooden box up. He found his way over to a table that  _wasn't_  broken, cleared it of the rubbish littering the top of it, and set the box down gently.

He stared down at it feeling bewildered by what he was experiencing. For some reason, he felt absolutely  _convinced_  that the solution to all of his problems lay within this box. And that  _knowledge_  seemed to have sparked life into a long dead, abandoned seed of hope, deep in his heart. But why he felt this way... he couldn't say.

Hesitantly, he unlatched the small, black, weathered catch holding the box shut, and opened the box. Inside he found a piece of folded parchment and a book.

That note and book would change his life drastically – far more than he ever would have guessed. However, he would come to determine that the changes were decidedly for the _best_.

– –

Time. It was relative. It was mostly a matter of perceptions as well. Not that Draco had ever really given time much thought before. He was aware, on some level, that Time was not nearly as perfect and measurable as some would insist.

Time could pass so quickly when he was enjoying himself, but it would drag on forever when he was waiting for something. Or when he was suffering under the torturous pain of the Dark Lord's Cruciatus curse. He had been informed that the longest he had been held under the Dark Lord's curse was a mere thirty seconds, but he would  _swear_  it was at least five minutes.

And as such, it was very easy for Draco to accept the fact that Time was not nearly as cut and dry as many people believed. But Draco had been raised a pureblood form an old magick family and there were certain 'truths' about magic that had been drilled into him since his youth, and one of those truths was that you  _don't mess with time._

Tampering with time was even more forbidden than the Unforgivables. Anyone that the Ministry discovered dicking around in Time Magic without proper authorization, got themselves a one-way ticket to Azkaban. But when the voice in the back of Draco's mind reminded him of that fact, his eyes would slide down to his left forearm and see the ugly black tattoo that now tainted his otherwise perfect flesh and remember that he already bore his ticket to Azkaban – or death, which ever came first.

And so he pressed on, because the more he had thought about what he had discovered inside the box, the more and more  _tempting_  the possibilities became. Because Draco Malfoy had a lot of regrets. A lot of things that, looking back, he would do differently. And what would things look like today, if certain other things had gone differently?

He had come to realize that he would give just about anything if it meant the end of the Dark Lord. The thing was that, he really didn't know how to do that. Harry Potter was being heralded as the Chosen One, and if what he'd learned of the Prophecy that had gotten his father in Azkaban was true... well if it was true Potter  _was_  the Chosen One. The Dark Lord had only ever learned the first three lines of the Prophecy. Not many people were privy to that information, but Draco was one of them. His father had told his mother the previous Yule holidays while the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters were quite desperately trying to find a way to acquire the damned thing from the Ministry.

Draco had long ago taken up the habit of spying on the goings on in the manor whenever he was there. Malfoy Manor had passages between all of the walls that the house elves used to move things, or to hid in the shadows so that they would be ready at a moments notice when one of their wizard masters needed something. As a young boy, Draco had taken to playing in the tiny tunnels, and discovered that the old silencing wards on them had degraded over the years and his parents had not realized.

He'd learned quite a lot of interesting, and occasionally disturbing, information that way. Especially since the Dark Lord had taken up residence in his family's home. He'd learned that Sirius Black had never been a Death Eater, and reports that he'd betrayed the Potters were greatly exaggerated. The man had been a member of the Order, and he had apparently died during the debacle at the Ministry at the hands of his mad aunt Bella.

He'd learned that Peter Pettigrew was called 'Wormtail' because he was an animagus who turned into a rather fat, ugly looking rat that had apparently been Weasley's pet rat – which he had to admit he found  _very_  amusing. He'd learned that the insanity that happened in his second year at Hogwarts with the Chamber of Secrets had  _something_  to do with a  _Diary_ that the Dark Lord had left in his father's care during the first war. The thing was that his father had  _not_  had permission to let the book out of his hands, and somehow at the end of Draco's second year, Potter had managed to destroy the book and  _that_  had absolutely  _infuriated_  the Dark Lord.

But despite the things that he  _did_  know, he still realized that he really had  _no idea_  how to go about saving his family from a fate he considered worth than simple death. Servitude, groveling, and pain, at the feet of a psychotic masochist.

He  _did_  know that it was Pettigrew that had found the Dark Lord's disembodied spirit and helped him regain a body. So if he could somehow prevent that... well, the man had just been a stupid little rat, right? So, he kill Weasley's pet rat when Wormtail was still Weasley's pet rat, and that's one crisis averted. But he realized that he wanted to go back... well, he wanted to go back to first year, if he were being honest with himself, and if what he found in The Box was true,  _he could_.

Going back to first year would also mean going back to the year that Quirrell was at Hogwarts with the Dark Lord hidden beneath his smelly turban. Potter and his friends had somehow stopped the Dark Lord at the end of their first year, and something Potter had done had banished the Dark Lord to whatever dark forest Pettigrew had later found him hiding in. So if Draco went all the way back to first year, he either had to make sure he didn't mess with time so badly that Potter failed at stopping the Dark Lord, or he would have to personally make sure that Potter succeeded at it again. Seeing as how he really didn't know many of the details about that whole ordeal didn't bode well for his chances.

Sure there were loads of rumors at the end of his first year, but it was hard to know what to believe and what not too. He was  _fairly sure_  that the rumor that Dumbledore had been hiding the Philosipher's Stone in the school was actually  _true_ , because that was just the sort of barmy thing the old coot would do, not to mention, it was one of the few magical artifacts that the Dark Lord would actually risk exposing himself over. But still – Draco just didn't _know_. He would be leaving a lot of things undecided and unplanned, which never sat well with him.

For once in his life, Draco was willing to just take a chance and leap into things head first. Quite simply, his current situation was so miserably dire that just about  _anything_ would be better, and he was willing to take the chances and deal with things as he was faced with them.

It was a disgustingly Gryffindor approach, but Draco was desperate. And desperate times call for desperate measures. And thus, Draco found himself rushing with only one day left before the Yule Holidays would begin and he would have to return to a Malfoy Manor filled with Death Eaters, and one very horrible Dark Lord, in hopes of completing his preparations, arithmancy calculations, and the last of the series of potions he would need to take, in order to perform the complex ritual described in the book and letter he'd found within The Box.

He was going to send his memories, knowledge, and magic back in time to his previous self. He was going to change the past, and hopefully make for himself and his family, a much better future.

His father would not approve of what few plans Draco had made, but in the long run it would benefit them far more than the poor choices Lucius Malfoy had been making and the miserable path it had led them all down. Draco was willing to take his younger father's disapproval in the short term if it saved them all in the long run.

If Harry Potter was the Chosen One, then Draco was going to make sure that Potter would be as prepared as possible to fulfill his destiny and rid the world of the horrific monstrosity that was the Dark Lord. He would befriend Harry Potter, at all costs. He would get his family on the side of the Light, whether they liked it or not.

Hopefully, he wouldn't get disowned for it before they realized it was all for the best.

– –

Pain. Disorientation. Confusion.

His head  _exploded_  with pressure and a maelstrom of confusing images,  _memories_ , emotions and sensations filled him, coursed  _through_  him, and a moment later, caused him to black out completely.

Draco Malfoy woke up in the center of his bedroom, sprawled out on the plush carpet floor to the sight of a pair of large, terrified-looking eyes and enormous floppy bat ears starting down at him and a pair of long-fingered and wrinkled hands wringing nervously, over top of him.

He screamed in shock and pushed himself back and into a sitting position before scrabbling to the wrist holder he'd taken to wearing on his left arm that had the dual benefit of making his wand easily accessible  _and_  covering the damned bloody tattoo on his arm – but the holster wasn't there. Neither was his wand anywhere on his person.

For that matter, his scream had been shockingly high pitched. Nearly as high pitched as the terrified shriek that had emitted from the house elf as it too jumped back in shock. The elf in question then began to beat its own head in with the nearest blunt object as it berated itself for scaring the young master.

Draco just gaped and watched the familiar elf punish itself for a moment as he attempted to sort through and make sense of the garbled mess in his mind. Clarity increased with each passing second and finally he seemed to collect enough of himself to order the elf to stop hitting itself and tell him the date.

The elf promptly stopped hitting himself and informed Draco that it was the young master's eleventh birthday – June 5th, 1991.

It had worked.

– –

It had been an absolutely  _exhausting_  month and a half. His mother was convinced he was ill for almost all of June and had brought in several healers to look him over. He'd been a bit nervous, but the first two hadn't found anything, and the only thing noteworthy that the last had mentioned was that he seemed to have a remarkably powerful and well-developed magical core for an eleven-year-old. That remark had caused his parents to both look at him with surprise and interest. His father's eyes had gleamed with pride and _greed_ , which didn't exactly sit well with Draco, if he were honest with himself.

He'd only just barely began to collect his frayed nerves during July and focus on playing the part of the young, spoiled little boy he'd been at age eleven. It wasn't easy. Mostly because he was so disgusted with himself in hindsight. How naive he'd been. How  _blind_. He had been so ignorant of the hardships of the real world, and so convinced in his own superiority even though he'd done absolutely nothing to warrant or earn such confidence or influence. It was all his  _father's_  power. His  _father's_  influence and money and respect. He was just the spoiled little rich boy who whined and bullied until he got whatever he wanted handed to him on a silver platter. But when he was suddenly thrust into the real world he realized that every 'skill' he'd nurtured during his first few years at Hogwarts was absolutely worthless out there where there were real consequences. Consequences that involved a lot of pain.

Not to mention that he'd been a right bastard back then. Not that he'd seemingly gotten much better in his later years, but much of that had been for the sake of maintaining appearances. He'd felt trapped in the role he'd established for himself at home and at Hogwarts. Any change in his personality or actions would have only been looked upon with suspicion by the majority of the school, and possibly seen as a sign of weakness by the other members of Slytherin who would have greedily taken advantage of the situation to improve their own status by diminishing his.

But that was one of the glorious things about having gone back this far. He could start over with a clean slate. He could be whoever he wanted to be now. Re-invent himself... assuming he was even capable of that. He was really rather accustomed to the way he'd acted for the majority of his life.

He had to maintain the old stuck-up spoiled boy act with his parents. His change in behavior and attitude had already drawn their notice and because of it, they were watching him more closely now and it was a scrutiny that he did not want, nor appreciate. But they were  _his parents_. They'd known him his whole life, and while his father wasn't around nearly as much as his mother, they both knew him well enough to know that something had happened, even if he denied it.

But at school no one would have any expectations set in stone. Sure, some people would have preconceived ideas because of who his father was that they would have a hard time letting go, but he still had a fresh chance to define himself in their eyes, mostly from a blank slate.

Even the people who he had ended up being 'friends' with from Slytherin house hadn't known him all that well as a child. Sure, he'd known Pansy and Theo, Greg and Vincent, since they were all quite young thanks to their parents social events, but they never saw each other in any regular or frequent occasion. They were all home schooled and privately tutored. They had occasionally had play-dates arranged by their families, but not so much as one might expect.

If he went to Hogwarts and acted in a manner significantly contrary to his original eleven-year-old self, no one would really know... well, except for Severus. He might notice. But it was common for a kid to try and reinvent themselves when going into an all new environment, right?

But until he got to Hogwarts, he needed to keep himself held together for the sake of his parents. The first real opportunity to set his only vaguely constructed plans into action was quickly approaching. July 31st was quickly approaching, and with it, his trip to Diagon Alley for his school supplies.

If there was one person he had desired a 'clean slate' do-over with, it was Harry Potter, and this would be his chance. He had to make it count.

– –

"This way, dear," Narcissa said as she nudged Draco away from the window display at Quality Quidditch Supplies.

"What is the next stop?" Lucius asked blandly as he looked around the bustling crowds of witches, wizards, and children, currently cluttering the cobblestone streets of Diagon Alley with an obvious air of disdain and superiority.

Narcissa Malfoy consulted Draco's list of school supplies for a moment before responding. "We still need to get Draco his school robes, his text books, and his wand. So, robes next."

Lucius barely covered a grimace, but Draco saw it. He knew how his father felt about clothes shopping, especially if his mother were present.

"For the sake of saving time, seeing as how I do need to pay Minister Fudge a visit for tea this afternoon, I propose I go to Flourish and Blotts and get Draco's textbooks while you attend to his robes," Lucius drawled.

"Fine with me, dear," she said as she separated off the sheet of parchment that listed the text books and handed it to her husband. He took it and with a few parting words, turned and headed down the opposite direction towards the bookstore.

Narcissa led Draco down to Madam Malkin's robes for all occasions and spent the next fifteen minutes looking through patters, fabrics, and making a complex list purchases while Draco sat in a small chair to the side, bored out of his mind and feeling both incredibly anxious and impatient.

So far things had progressed almost identically to the way it had in his original timeline. They'd gotten him a brand new top-of-the-line three compartment trunk with space expanded interiors – Draco had to admit that it had been a necessary indulgence considering how many things he owned and would be taking with him to school – and they had gone to the apothecary for his potions kit. They had also gotten his telescope and stationary supplies already as well.

Now he was just waiting for his mother to finish her business with the madam so he could start getting measured. Finally, she did just that and as Draco was led up to a small pedestal so the matron could begin taking his measurement, Narcissa Malfoy informed Draco that she was going to browse a little at several of the shops along the Alley and would meet him at Ollivander's for his wand when he was done.

He impatiently waved her off and heaved a sigh of relief as she finally vanished out the front door. It was only a matter of minutes later when he heard the little bell over the door ding and heard the voice of Madam Malkin as she asked, "Hogwarts, dear?"

Draco felt his heart rate peak with nerves and anticipation as he waited a moment longer before the familiar and yet shockingly  _small_  black-haired boy appeared around the corner and was led to the pedestal to Draco's left.

He'd gotten used to his own short stature and the frustratingly high-pitched childish voice over the course of the last almost-two-months, but it was still oddly surprising to see Harry Potter  _so young_  again. The boy's slight form was only emphasized by the thread-bare, oversized clothing he was wearing that hung off him unflatteringly. It was almost a relieve when Madam Malkin threw a robe over Potter's head and began to pin it.

"Hello," Draco began tentatively. "Hogwarts too? First year?"

Potter turned his head and looked up at Draco through his fringe with a cautious bashful look about him that Draco couldn't honestly recall ever seeing on Potter's face before, but he knew that when he was actually eleven, he wouldn't really have been paying attention enough to have noticed something like that. He had probably been too distracted by Potter's ratty muggle clothes to notice.

"Er, yeah," Potter said in reply, and the childlike voice sent another pang of shock reeling through Draco, but he masked the surprise. It was all just  _so surreal_.

"Me too. I'm Draco Malfoy," Draco said, turning slightly toward Potter and extending out his hand. The pang of deja vu did not go unnoticed by the blond.

Potter eyed the hand for a moment as if he didn't know what to do with it before he seemed to pull himself together and maneuvered despite the seamstresses pinning so that he could take Draco's hand and he shook it.

It was entirely idiotic how  _happy_  that made Draco feel and he internally scolded himself for it.

"Harry Potter," Potter replied.

Draco heard the slightest intake of breath from the witch who was pinning his robes, but didn't give any reaction himself to Potter's name. He may have been obsessively jealous and bitter about Harry Potter for years, but he'd also watched him enough to have admitted – even if only to himself – that the Boy-Who-Lived actually despised his fame and would not appreciate it if Draco approached their new relationship with anything resembling hero-worship. He knew that would be the wrong approach here, so he chose to go with treating Harry as if he were any other boy.

"Pleasure to meet you," Draco said with a polite nod as he shook Potter's hand. "So are you excited? I've been looking forward to Hogwarts for as long as I can remember."

"Excited? Oh, definitely," Potter said with a huge grin before it became a bit sheepish and he ducked his head. "But I er... I only just found out about it. I didn't know about Hogwarts before last night."

 _That_  gave Draco pause. He'd had  _no idea_  that Potter hadn't known about Hogwarts  _at all_  before this point! He'd known he was raised by muggles, but that he hadn't known  _at all?_

Draco's lightening fast mind flew through potential responses to move the conversation forward. For a fraction of a second he considered asking Potter if he were muggleborn, but he realized it would be far to unbelievable to anyone besides Potter himself that Draco did not know who  _Harry Potter_  was, so that direction was out.

"Raised by muggles, then?" Draco said, putting as much effort as he could into  _not_  sounding derisive or condescending when he said the word 'muggles'.

"That's right," Potter answered quietly.

"And they never  _told you?_  Really?" Draco asked, honestly curious.

Potter scowled and ducked his head. "No, they never did," he grumbled under his breath.

"But they knew, right? I mean, when you were left with them, they were  _told_  that you're a wizard, right?"

"Yeah, I think so... wait... how did you know that I was, er... left with... I mean, that I don't live with my parents?"

"Er... well, I mean... I  _have_ heard of you. You  _do_  know that you're kind of famous in our world, right?"

"Oh... yeah. I um... I know. I sort of ran into a big crowd in the Leaky Cauldron. It was erm... a bit much."

Draco snorted. "I bet. Personally I think they're all being a bit mental and insensitive. I mean, do you even  _remember_  the night? You were like... thirteen months old when it happened right?"

"Yeah, I guess so. I don't remember any of it."

"Exactly! I can only imagine how unpleasant it would be to be famous for  _not dying_. Being constantly reminded of it... I dunno. People are insensitive and stupid sometimes. Although, I suppose I'm not being much better, so please accept my apologies."

"No, no. You're, er... much better. Really. I mean, you haven't like, tried to touch me or shake my hand or asked about the scar or something. The people in the pub... it was... strange. And yeah... they were a bit much."

"So who did you end up with? After your parents, I mean... You don't have to answer that if you don't want to."

"Oh, I ended up with my aunt and uncle. My aunt is my mum's sister."

"And they're muggles, and they  _never_  told you? What did they tell you happened to your parents?"

Potter scowled again and looked down at his feet. "They said they died in a car crash."

"Car... that's one of those otomo-bills right?" Draco said, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar word as he wasn't entirely sure how it was pronounced.

Potter looked back up and the corner of his mouth turned up and Draco could see the slightest indication of amusement sparkle in his eyes, but he squashed it admirably.

"Um, yeah. It's automobile, actually, but that was pretty close. So er... do wizards not use cars?"

"No, we really don't have much need for them."

"How do you get around then?"

"Well, there's flying broom travel, for one."

"You mean wizards really do fly on brooms?" Potter exclaimed excitedly.

"Of course. But for long-distance travel, few people go with brooms. Brooms are mostly used in sports now. There's professional broom racing, Quidditch, and arial acrobatic competitions. We also have professional hippogryph races – they fly too, of course."

"Wow... so how do people do long-distance travel then?"

"Well, there's the Floo Network for one."

"What's that?" Potter asked with sparkling interest in his eyes.

Draco had just finished describing what the Floo Network was when the madam said she was done with taking Potter's measurements.

"How come you're not done yet?" Potter asked, looking at Draco who had yet  _another_  robe drapped over his head and being pinned again.

"My mother is getting me a whole knew wardrobe. You know... you're just getting the basic student robes, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Why not get more? Get a full set for yourself too. Trousers, silk shirts, casual robes... maybe even get one set of dress robes."

"Oh... I never... I... yeah. Alright. Sure. Um, Madam?" Potter said, turning back to Madam Malkin who had been listening in and gave him a soft smile. She quickly brought out a listing of options and began to show Potter samples and patterns.

Pinning resumed again and Draco then began to explain what apparition was. The seamstress witch that was working on Draco finished first and as she packaged up his robes he continued to stand beside Potter talking and explaining things to the enthusiastic boy who was quickly slipping out of his shell and eagerly asking more questions.

"Alright then dear, you're done now too," Madam Malkin said and Potter turned and smiled up at her thankfully.

"Thanks!"

The two boys followed the witch up to the counter where Draco's package was already waiting for him. He pulled out the money pouch his mother had given him and paid, then stood aside and waited as Potter paid for his.

"Have you gotten your wand yet?" Draco asked.

"No, not yet."

"Well that's where I'm supposed to go next. My mother is supposed to be waiting there for me. Would you like to go with?"

"Oh, I don't know, I'd have to see what – oh, Hagrid!"

"There yeh are, 'arry! I got yeh some ice crème," Hagrid, who was standing just outside the store as they walked out, said holding two towering cones of ice cream that Draco knew must have been charmed by Fortescue not to melt or else it would have been dripping all over the half-giant's hands. "Who's yer friend?" Hagrid asked, turning his attention on Draco.

"Hey, Hagrid! Wow, thanks. Erm, this is my friend Draco. Draco, this is Hagrid. He's the gamekeeper at Hogwarts. He brought me here from my relatives."

Draco found himself feeling shockingly warm and giddy at the introduction as Harry's 'friend'. Which was silly and he knew it. He momentarily tried to convince himself that it was because his efforts were paying off so quickly and that it had nothing to do with the stupidly still-painful rejection he'd experienced during his original first year.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, sir," Draco said to Hagrid, extending his tiny hand and keeping his face as impassive as he could and using every bit of self control he had to keep from grimacing as the enormous oaf shifted one of the cones into his other hand that was now holding both in one of his giant hands and then used his now free, but slightly sticky, hand to shake Draco's hand.

"Draco, was it? Will yeh be startin' Hogwarts this year?"

"That's right, sir."

"Ah, none of tha' sir nonsense. Call me Hagrid."

"Alright... Hagrid," Draco said, still managing to keep his expression impassive. He knew that insulting Hagrid had been one of his first significant mistakes with Harry Potter and was dedicated to not repeat it... no matter how repulsive he found the man.

"Draco asked me if I wanted to go with him to the wand shop," Harry said to Hagrid. "He said that his mother is waiting there for him."

"Well, I s'pose we could. We've still got a few more places teh go before we're done fer the day. I was thinkin' tha we could head to the menagerie next though."

"What's there?" Harry asked.

"Tha's where yeh can get yet pet, a'course!"

Draco had a vague recollection that Potter's owl had been a gift from Hagrid, apparently during this trip.

"Harry could come with me to Ollivanders while you go to the Magical Menagerie. My father told me that getting your first wand can sometimes take quite a while," Draco said as he remembered the frustrating twenty minute process of getting his wand the first time.

"Yeah, tha' is true. I suppose it would be fine then. I'll walk with yeh and then head off to let you two get yer wands."

The group made their way down the alley towards Ollivanders and Draco mostly kept his eyes on Harry who was still looking around wildly as if he were desperately trying to see everything there was to see, all at once.

Draco chuckled at a few of his reactions and easily answered the questions Potter actually asked out loud, while figuring by the other boy's confused or curious looks what Potter might be wondering about and taking the prerogative to answer per-emptively.

It was a strange experience for Draco in general. It was very outside his normal acceptable range of behavior to be so openly helpful. Normally he would take the opportunity to openly scorn another person's lack of knowledge. There was a time when the very idea of someone who was muggle-raised daring to step foot in and sully their noble and far superior society would have disgusted him, but he'd seen and experienced a lot since then, and his eyes had been opened.

Having a deep, determined, need, and powerfully driving reason to motive his change in behavior was helpful as well.

But that was simply the catalyst. Now that he was doing it, he was finding himself enjoying Potter's reactions. The open, trusting, smile on the smaller boy's face. The delighted glow in his eyes as he experienced the world of magic for the first time. The wonder and  _awe_  that he was experiencing was wonderful. Draco had grown up in the wizarding world. He had always known this world. There really wasn't any awe or wonder in it for him. When he was very young and he'd been taken to Diagon Alley for the very first time, there had been some degree of it, but mostly he was trying too hard to impress his father by acting like a stupid little prat to enjoy the alley for what it was.

Now he was getting to enjoy it through Potter and it was rather exhilarating. Seeing the world that had become commonplace to him through the eyes of an outsider. And outsider who was clearly entranced with it's beauty and wonder.

They arrived at Ollivanders far too quickly for Draco's taste and the two boys made their way into the shop while Hagrid hunched down slightly and stuck his head in through the doorway and squinted into the dim shop.

"My mother is just over there," Draco said quickly. "Thanks for letting Harry come with me, by the way."

"Oh yeah, no worries, Well, alright then, I suppose I'll be seein' yeh is a bit, Harry. I'll probably be done and back bef'er the two of yeh are done in here. But if not, just come find me in the Magical Menagerie."

"Alright, Hagrid."

The half-giant man's head retreated from the open doorway and the door closed a moment later.

Draco sucked in a slow breath as he turned his attention back to where he'd seen his mother standing towards the wall opposite the front where they were currently standing. She'd turned around slowly and was currently looking at him with mildly concealed curiosity mixed with an obvious air of bewilderment. He had, after all, just come in with another boy while being escorted by the Hogwart's halfbreed groundskeeper.

"Hello, Mother."

"Draco, dear – who's your friend?" Narcissa Malfoy said, clearly choosing to ignore the undesirable escort and instead focus on the unidentified boy instead."

"Mother, this is... Harry Potter," Draco said after the slightest of pauses where he wondered the merits of simply introducing the boy as 'Harry', but knew that would never fly with either of his parents.

His mother's eyes widened minutely and then jerked over and went straight to Potter's forehead. Even in the dim room, he could see Potter's cheeks pinken and his head duck with embarrassment.

"Harry Potter?" she echoed mildly, and yet the shocked question in her tone was clearly there.

It was at that moment that Ollivander decided to make his mysterious appearance out of nowhere, pulling attention away from the uncomfortably bashful Harry Potter and to the silvery-eyed ancient wandmaker instead.

Draco volunteered to go first and Ollivander then proceeded to list the wood and core type of both his parents wands,  _and_  his father's father's wand before walking over to the wall and beginning to pluck wand boxes out from the wall of wand boxes.

About ten minutes had passed with no discernible progress and Draco was honestly wishing he could just  _tell_  the old man what his wand was supposed to be, but that was obviously not an option.

His mother made an effort to point out how long it had taken  _her_  to get her first wand, just as she had his first time around, in order to reassure any childhood nerves he might be experiencing, even though he actually wasn't. He continued to talk with Potter through the whole process, telling the boy what he knew about wands.

He told him about the primary wand core types he'd heard of being used, and about how the wood type, more often than not, tended to be associated with whatever time of the month you were born in.

"Really? But if it does, how come he hasn't asked you when your birthday was?"

Draco shrugged. "He probably knows. You'll notice that most of the wands he's had me try are either Hawthorn, Willow, or Oak?"

"Yeah?"

"Those are the three woods around my birthday. Willow is for mid-April through mid-May, so it's actually one early. Hawthorn is for mid May through mid June, so Hawthorn is probably my best match because my birthday is June 5th. Oak is from mid-June through early July."

"What's for late July?" Harry asked.

"Holly. Most of August is Hazel if I recall correctly."

"You are quite knowledgeable about wandlore, Mr. Malfoy," Ollivander said as he reappeared at his side with a mildly impressed sparkle to his eyes.

Draco couldn't help tilting his nose up and smirking slightly.

His eyes glanced hesitantly over to his mother who was perched stiffly on the spindly little chair by the door and he could see that her brows had risen slightly into her forehead and she looked honestly impressed herself that he knew much of anything at all about wands. It was an obscure branch of magic and few people bothered to learn much about it. Most people's interest only went as far as getting a wand that worked for them and then some basic maintenance and polish.

Draco had found it rather interesting when he'd stumbled across a book about it in second year when he was first entering his secret bookish phase that he'd kept tightly hidden from anyone who might ridicule him for it.

Ollivander then presented him with another box, lifted off the lid and Draco was faced with a gloriously familiar wand. His eyes lit up with recognition which he quickly concealed as he reached out and took the wand in his hand.

A relieved breath escaped him, despite his efforts to control his reactions and he felt himself smile as a warm tingle rushed through his hand, up his arm, and down his chest.

"Hawthorn, 10 inches, reasonably springy, unicorn hair," Ollivander was saying as Draco gave the wand a swish and a shower of green sparks shot from the end.

Harry gave a happy whoop and clapped his hands in congratulation. Draco looked at the shorter boy and smiled in both thanks as well as honest joy at being reunited with his precious wand.

Once they'd paid for his wand, it was obvious that his mother was torn between her desire to get out of the grubby little store and rejoin his father, and the desire to get to observe the Boy-Who-Lived getting his first wand.

Finally, Draco was able to whine his way into staying to keep his new friend company since Harry had so graciously stood around while he got his wand.

Harry seemed grateful that Draco had stayed and that gratitude only grew as he went through more and more wands, and the old wandmaker got more and more excited. He was muttering quietly under his breath as he went back and forth from the little table and his walls of wand boxes. He seemed rather thrilled with his 'tough customer', and after about a half hour of trying out wands and constantly blowing bits of the store to pieces, Ollivander finally muttered something under his breath before disappearing back into the rear of the store and reappeared with a single box that he opened hesitantly – almost reverently – and offered it to Harry.

Harry reached out tentatively and grasped the wand in his hand. Wind seemed to blow in the tiny, dusty, shop and Draco could  _feel_  the magic that seemed to pour out from the small boy as he was chosen by the wand in his hand.

"Go ahead. Give it a wave," Ollivander whispered.

Harry did just that and a huge shower of golden sparks emerged from the tip, lighting up Potter's elated face and filling the room with light for the next few moments.

"Curious... very curious," Ollivander whispered, eyeing Harry and the wand with intense, silvery eyes.

"What's curious?" Harry asked, his voice little more than a whisper as well, since the tense atmosphere in the small shop seemed to call for it, still.

"The Phoenix whose feather lies in the core of your wand gave another feather – only one other feather, ever. It just so happens that the wand who shares a twin core to your own was the very wand that gave you that... scar," the old wandmaker whispered as his finger came up and brushed across Harry's forehead, exposing the scar beneath the fringe.

Draco heard his mother gasp from several feet behind him, and felt his own heart pounding in his chest as he processed what the old man had just revealed.

"You mean, Voldemort?" Harry whispered as he looked up at Ollivander with wide eyes, filled with a boiling cauldron of emotions.

Draco noticed that his mother made a quiet hissing sound as she pulled in air through clenched teeth as the boy dared to speak the Dark Lord's name. Draco couldn't help but feel the slightest tinge of envy and awe at the boy's courage. Of course, at this point, it was mostly ignorance. But even after Potter  _had_  known how terrifying the Dark Lord was, he'd still continued to defy common sense and propriety and freely used the forbidden name.

"I never forget a wand, Mr. Potter," Ollivander said in that eerie voice of his. "Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember... I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter... After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things —  _terrible_ , yes, but great."

Potter paid for his wand and the three left the shop in silence. Hagrid was out there waiting for him and offered up the best distraction from the eerie events that they had all just witnessed unfold. A present. He was standing there with a bright, accomplished smile on is face, holding an owl cage with a familiar, beautiful snowy owl in it.

He presented it to Harry with a hearty  _'Harry Birthday, Harry!'_ , to which Potter gasped and muttered something about never getting a birthday present before as he flushed and looked over his new owl.

Draco couldn't help but wonder if Potter could possibly be exaggerating, or if he really  _hadn't_  gotten a birthday present before.

Potter went on to say something to Hagrid about a cake and how he hadn't needed to get him anything, which Hagrid quickly dismissed.

"Harry," Draco said, calling the smaller boy's attention back to him, "I've got to go now, but er... well, now that you've got your own owl, would you mind if I wrote to you? Until school starts up, that is."

Potter's eyes widened and his face seemed to glow with surprise and joy. "You'd want to write to me?" he whispered, and Draco felt something twist inside him. He realized that he'd known on some level that Potter did not have a pleasant home-life with the muggles , years ago, but it hadn't really  _meant_  anything to him then. But now he was seeing Potter as a young, innocent boy, who was obviously so very desperate for somewhere to belong – somewhere to be happy – and a friend.

The whole thing was confusing and conflicting and Draco found himself quickly burying the flurry of confusion emotions and swallowing the lump that had manifested in his throat.

He forced a warm smile out and rolled his eyes playfully. "Of  _course_  I would. Is it alright?"

"Yes! That would be brilliant. I've um... well, I've never had an owl before or anything, obviously, so I'm not entirely sure what to do."

"Well, we can exchanges addresses now," Draco said as he turned to his mother. "Can I use some of the parchment we bought at the stationary shop?"

"I've got some in my handbag. It would be simpler than unshrinking our purches," his mother said as she slid the ornately beaded handbag off her shoulder and began to dig around inside it for a moment. She came out with a small leather-bound address book and a self-inking quill and handed them to Draco, who quickly wrote down the owl post address to the Manor on one of the pages and tore it out.

Harry took it and read it briefly. "Draco Malfoy's room, Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire, England. Is that really enough for the post?"

"That should be more than enough. The owl should be able to find me from that. Really intelligent owls can find a person with only their name on the letter, but putting a bit of an address is usually a good idea, just in case."

"Oh, alright, um, for mine –" Harry hesitated long enough for Draco to get the quill and address book ready again. "Number 4, Privet Drive, Surrey, England."

Draco wrote it down, tore out the page and put it into his pocket. He then handed the address book and quill back to his mother and thanked her politely. She gave him a curt nod and went back to observing her son's curious interactions with the Boy-Who-Lived, in silence.

"Alright, well I'll write to you later tonight, probably, if that's alright?" Draco said hesitantly.

"That'd be brilliant, I'll watch for your owl."

"Great. Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Harry Potter. You too, Mr. Hagrid," Draco said, slipping into a slightly more formal tone and bowing his head slightly to Hagrid.

"Now, I told ya – just Hagrid. It was nice meetin' ya to. Er, nice seein' yeh, Lady Malfoy," Hagrid said, giving a small bow of his head to Draco's mother. Draco noticed the slightest bit of concern enter the halfbreed's eyes as he glanced at her and then back down to Draco, but it was gone a moment later. Draco had wondered if Hagrid had realized  _who_  exactly he was, but apparently he had at some point figured it out.

"Yes, thank you. It was... pleasant, seeing you as well, Mr. Hagrid," his mother responded in a rather clipped tone but Draco noticed she managed not to grimace or sneer. She was no doubt going along for Draco's sake. He was fully anticipating a rather thorough inquisition as soon as Harry Potter was no longer present and he was  _not_  looking forward to it. "It was also a pleasure to meet you as well, Mr. Potter," she continued as she knelt down in front of Harry and ran her hand over his chaotic fringe. Potter's eyes widened significantly at his whole body seemed to tense at the unexpected contact. Draco rolled his eyes. Even with a complete stranger of a boy she couldn't keep herself from some excessive public mothering.

"Did you know, Mr. Potter, that you and I are second cousins?" Narcissa Malfoy said with a small smile and in a quiet voice.

Potter's jaw dropped open and his eyes widened even further. Draco's jaw dropped with it because – cousin? – this was the first time he'd ever heard anything of the sort!

"C-cousins?" Potter gasped.

Draco's mother smiled kindly and nodded her head. "Yes, that's right. Your father, James Potter, was the son of Charlus Potter and Dorea Black. Dorea Black was my great-aunt."

"Potter's grandmother was a Black?" Draco gasped in shock.

"Yes, dear. The Potters are listed on the Black Family Tree. I've shown you my copy."

"Well, yes, but... I... I guess I just ever noticed," Draco said, his voice faltering as he was still feeling rather overwhelmed by this shocking revelation. Why had he never heard anything of the sort  _before now?_ Then again, his family probably hadn't been all that eager to parade around a familial relation to the boy who  _vanquished_  the their Lord.

"Wait, so Draco and I are  _related?"_  Harry exclaimed, looking both stunned and elated at the same time.

"That's right," Narcissa said with that same warm smile.

Hagrid was looking confused now, but that concerned expression was back in his eyes and they darted between the two Malfoys and the Boy-Who-Lived. No doubt Dumbledore would be hearing about this when the oaf got back to the castle.

"I... I didn't know I had any family... other than my aunt Petunia and cousin Dudley, anyway." Potter said in a quiet voice with a bit of a quaver.

"Well, now you know," Narcissa said with a curt nod and after a light pat to his shoulder, she stood up tall and proud returning to her normal public persona. She turned her attention on Hagrid and Draco noticed a bit of her obvious disgust for the man show on her face, but it was carefully controlled. "You are his guide while he gets his school supplies?"

"Tha's right," Hagrid said with a nod.

"Might I suggest you take him to Aspicio's Oculus. His glasses are practically falling apart and he clearly needs new ones. He's at the right age for eyesight correction, if he's interested in that." She turned her eyes back down to Potter and her gaze softened some. "I had my own eyesight corrected the summer before I attended Hogwarts. If you wish to do it, you should do it soon. If you wait too long, you won't be able to fix them and will have to rely on glasses your whole life."

"I can get my eyes  _fixed?_ " Potter gasped in awe.

"But of course. I look forward to seeing you again, Mr. Potter. Do keep in touch. Come along, Draco. I'm sure your father is beginning to wonder what's keeping us so long."

"Yes, Mother," Draco replied automatically before turning his head back to Potter. "I'll see you on the train, Harry. I'll send an owl tonight."

"Yeah, see ya," Potter said, seeming somewhat stunned still.

Waves were exchanged and Draco followed his mother down the street towards the bookstore while Potter turned back to Hagrid and his focus seemed to shift back onto his new owl.

Draco and his mother rounded the bend before the silence was broken.

"Well, that was unexpected," Narcissa Malfoy spoke loftily. "Tell me, Draco – what exactly was it that you were aiming for with that encounter? I couldn't help but note how unexpectedly...  _genial_  you were being with that...  _halfbreed_. That's quite unlike you. I assume you were doing so for a good reason?"

Draco kept his chin tipped up and his stance proud and controlled as he replied. "It was obvious that Potter held the man in high regard. If I had openly insulted the oaf, Potter would have taken offense."

"That's quite astute of you, Draco."

"Thank you, mother."

"I am curious though, as to why you would desire association with the boy. I assume that it's his name alone that caught your eye. His clothing was atrocious and judging by his escort and his...  _esteem_ , for the man, his taste in company is rather lacking."

"While we were at Madam Malkin's I got him to purchase himself a new wardrobe, so at least his clothing should improve by school," Draco said quickly as he attempted to plan out in his mind how best to approach his mother's question. "And he cannot entirely be blamed for his company or his manner of dress. He was... well, he's apparently been raised by muggles –"

"I gathered as much from your conversation in Ollivanders," Narcissa stated.

"Yes, well, he was never told about the wizarding world at all. The beastly people have apparently treated him rather poorly from what I can gather, and they lied to him about being a wizard. That's why he is so fond of the halfbreed oaf. He sees the man as a rescuer since he was the one to took Potter from the muggles."

"I see..." Narcissa said in a slightly clipped tone.

"Potter knows nothing of our world!  _Nothing_.  _The Boy-Who-Lived_  is completely ignorant of the magical world! The filthy muggles that raised him not only lied and mislead him, they clearly treated him awful. It's unforgivable that  _muggles_  would have the audacity to do something like that to a  _wizard_! But anyway, after some careful observation and listening, I determined that by lending some simple assistance and teaching him a few of our ways, I would gain his favor, and it's worked. I also saw that it was an opportunity to get close to someone of potential social and political importance without having to use Father's name to do it. Harry Potter doesn't know anything about the Malfoy family or anyone else, for that matter. If I can earn his friendship and trust, it will be entirely on my own worth." Draco tried to remain calm and confident through all of it, but his voice trailed off a bit quieter towards the end since he was unsure exactly how such a statement would be taken by his mother.

In his first youth, he'd basically existed off his family's name and wealth, and his father's political power. Only later on did he realize how... well,  _pathetic_ , that had been.

Narcissa stopped in her progress and looked down at Draco with surprise in her eyes. Her expression slowly softened and she gave him a small, but warm, smile and then a short nod. "I understand, dear. I must admit, I'm surprised by your shift in priorities and approach over the course of this summer, but I'm also quite proud of you. You're turning into quite the young man. Maturing so quickly," she sighed wistfully, "Well done, Draco."

Draco felt his cheeks flush slightly and he only just barely fought the urge to duck his head bashfully. But something like that was just not proper for a Malfoy, so he maintained his calm facade instead. "Thank you, mother." he said in a slightly quiet tone.

– –

_July 31_ _st_ _, 1991_

_Harry Potter,_

_I hope this letter finds you well. I enjoyed meeting you today at Diagon Alley. I must admit that I'm still reeling from the realization that you and I are actually related – even if it is a vaguely distant relation._

_I hope those muggle relations of yours treat you better for the month remaining before school. I got the distinct impression from our meeting that they are far from the best guardians for a person, and of course there remains the fact that they're muggles, which is rather awful in and of itself._

_Oh, my owls name is Theron, by the way. You can send him off if he's still waiting for a response and use your own owl when you have a response ready. I got him for my birthday earlier this summer. I had an owl of my own already since I was younger, but she was smaller and not able to carry large packages or make terribly long journeys. Hogwarts is a fairly long flight from home and I'll likely be sending correspondences to my parents rather regularly and she wouldn't be able to handle the strain. Theron is pretty brilliant so far. His name means Hunter in Greek. I think it's rather fitting. Have you named your owl yet? She really was quite beautiful, although I didn't get a good look at her in the brief time I saw her._

_Have you started looking through your text books yet? I'm going to try and read through my entire potions text before getting to school. My godfather is the Potions Master at Hogwarts and he's a serious taskmaster. It doesn't put up with incompetents or 'dunderheads', so I would recommend you do the same._

_Actually, I have a book that he gave me for my birthday that I would recommend you read. It's a companion potions guide for wizards our age that would probably help drastically in preparing you for his class. It's not on the list for school books, but it really should be. If you'd like I can send it to you and you can read through it and return it to me when we see each other on the train to Hogwarts._

_If you have any questions about the magical world or just magic in general – like if you encounter something in one of our setbooks that you don't quite understand, feel free to ask me and I'll write back right away. I can only imagine how overwhelming it would be to be faced with going to Hogwarts and learning magic when I'd never even known it existed a month prior._

_Hope to hear from you soon,_

_Draco Malfoy_

– –

_July 31_ _st_ _, 1991_

_Draco,_

_Thank you so much for writing. I have to admit that part of me didn't really expect you to really write It's hard for me to believe that anyone would ever want to write me. I'm still in shock about everything that's happened in the last day. Part of me keeps thinking that it's all been a big crazy dream, or I just imagined it all, but then I look at my books, or hold my wand, and I realize that it really is real. It's so crazy!_

_You're owl is really handsome by the way. What sort of owl is he? I gave him some owl treats – is that alright? He seems to be getting along with my owl pretty well so far. Oh, and I named my owl Hedwig. She's a snowy owl (obviously) and so far she seems absolutely brilliant._

_After you and your mother left, Hagrid took me to the Oculus like your mum suggested. Apparently getting your eyesight fixed is really really expensive and can only be done when the eyes are still developing, so our age is considered the perfect time for doing it. Since I just discovered that I've got a huge vault full of money my parents left me, and I can't even imagine what I'll ever do with it all, I figured if I was ever going to splurge on anything, fixing my eyesight was probably the best thing I could do. So I went for it! No more glasses! And I can see so well, it's incredible! I never realized how much I was missing._

_It's going to be great to not have to worry about my glasses getting broken or taken from me anymore._

_After we got back to Surrey, Hagrid talked with my relatives and they've been keeping their distance from me ever since, which has been great. They even moved me into my cousin's second bedroom! It's smaller than his main bedroom, but its so much more space than I'm used to._

_I'm going to start reading through some of my textbooks tomorrow. I'll focus on the Potions book like you suggested. If you're really okay with lending me the book you mentioned, I'd really appreciate it, so thanks. I have to admit that I'm really worried that I'm going to get to Hogwarts and be so far behind everyone because I hadn't known about any of this stuff before last night._

_Also thanks for the offer to answer my questions. It's great to know I've got someone I can ask about this stuff._

_Oh, and I did have one other thing I wanted to ask about. You mother said that my grandmother was a Black and that she was your mum's great-aunt, right? Does she know anything else about my father's side of the family? Are any other relatives from that side still alive? I only really know about my mum's side of the family and they're all muggles. My aunt and uncle told me that my father was a drunkard, but considering all of the things they've lied to me about him, I'm thinking they were lying about this too._

_Anyway, thanks again!_

_Harry Potter_

– –

_August 1_ _st_ _, 1991_

_Harry,_

_You're owl really is beautiful. I told her she could rest in our owlery until she was ready to fly back to you._

_I asked my mother about your family and she dug out the small copy she has of the Black Family Tree for me to look at. (My mother's maiden name is Black, like your grandmother). I'm afraid that I can't tell you much about the Potter's from it. All I know is that your Grandfather was named Charlus Potter and he married Dorea Black. They only had one child – your father, James Potter. Dorea and Charlus Potter both died in 1977, on the same date, so it obviously wasn't from natural causes and certainly not old age. Most likely, they died during an attack or something during the war. In fact, looking over the Black Family Tree, it looks like most of them died in 1977 or 1978, so the family clearly had a lot of involvement in the war._

_Dorea Black had two brothers and one sister. One of the brothers was a squib named Marius and nothing is really known about him because he was disowned and went to live in the muggle world. Dorea's sister is named Cassiopeia and she's still alive and apparently unmarried because the tree still lists her as Cassiopeia Black. Her brother, Pollux Black was the head of the Ancient and Noble house of Black until he died last spring. He was my great-grandfather._

_He left control of the family to my mother's cousin Sirius, who is the eldest living male Black alive, but he's currently in Azkaban, so no one is really running the family's assets now. You and I are basically the closest thing the family has to heirs at the moment. We both have more claim to it than my mother or aunt Andromeda do since we're male. Andromeda had only had one child and she's female as well, so we're still at the top. Also, I'm fairly sure that Sirius Black is your godfather, so that only adds to your claim to it. He and your father were supposedly as close as brothers according to my mother, so he most likely named you his heir before he was imprisoned._

_I don't see myself having any real need to lay claim to the Head of House Black title since I'm already heir to the Malfoy family. But then again, I suppose you're the heir of the Potter family, which is almost as old and powerful as the Blacks and the Malfoys. I don't actually know what sort of assets you might have inherited though, but I know the Potters used to be considered high society._

_I've sent Theron with the book I mentioned. It's fairly thin, so it shouldn't take you too long to get through. It mostly covers some fundamentals like the best ways to cut, crush, dice, etc. different ingredients, and talks about how preparation effects potency. It also talks about ingredient interaction and how to avoid explosions. I definitely recommend you read through it a few times, but don't neglect your main text either._

_Oh, and congratulations about ridding yourself of your glasses!_

_Write back,_

_Draco._

– –

_August 2_ _nd_ _, 1991_

_Draco,_

_I don't even know where to start, I've got so many questions! I'm just going to go down your letter and ask about everything I didn't understand. First off, what's a squib? Why would Marius Black be disowned for being one?_

_What does it mean to be the Head of the family, exactly? And what would it mean for either of us to be the heir of the family? Can girls really not be the head of a family? That doesn't seem very fair to me._

_Why is Sirius Black in prison? How did he know my father? Or was it because they were cousins? Was he really my godfather?_

_Can you tell me more about the war? Hagrid told me that my parents fought in the war, and the reason it ended was basically because of what happened to me the night my parents died and I got my scar._

_Hagrid didn't seem very comfortable talking about the war or about Voldemort, and he was kind of vague with describing what happened. I feel like everyone in the wizarding world knows more about it than I do, and it happened_ to me _._

_Oh, and thank you again for the book. It's really helped me understand so much! At first I sort of assumed that making potions was sort of like cooking, and I'm pretty good at cooking, but I realize now it's so much more complicated and delicate. With a stew it doesn't really matter all that much if you chop or dice the ingredients, all that matters is that you get the right ingredients in the right amounts in, but with potions what order you put them in matters, and how exactly they're prepared and what sort of knife you used to cut them matters, and it matters if the flame is on or not – it's crazy! It's going to take a lot of focus to make sure I do it all just right._

_Anyway, I've got to go tend to my aunts garden or she'll have my hide._

_Harry_

– –

_August 3_ _rd,_ _1991_

_Harry,_

_A Squib is someone born from magical parents who has no magic. Basically like a muggle, but with magical parents. It's sort of the opposite of a muggleborn, where a pair of muggles somehow manage to produce a child with magic. A lot of the old families consider a squib born into their family as disgraceful._

_Even when they aren't disowned, most squibs choose to go live in the muggle world since trying to live in our world when you don't have any magical ability is near-impossible._

_The old magical families are usually very wealthy and very powerful, both magically and politically. The Head of the Family is the one who is primarily in control of the family's assets and estates. If the family holds any seats on the Wizengamot (this is Magical Britain's legislative and judicial body) or the ICW (International Confederation of Wizards), the Head of the family is the one who casts the family's votes._

_Right now, since the House of Black is currently without an active head, I would assume that the Gringotts Goblins are handling the family's investments and properties, and the family's seat in the Wizengamot is going unrepresented. Whoever ends up being declared the family's heir after Sirius Black dies will have to take over those responsibilities. When you're of age (in the wizarding world, that's at 17) you'll have to take on those responsibilities for the House of Potter. I'm fairly sure that your family has a seat on the Wizengamot, but I'm not positive. You could probably ask the goblins at Gringotts and they'd know since Wizengamot membership require a yearly due and they're no doubt paying it automatically._

_The vault you mentioned is probably a trust account and when you reach 17 you'll be granted access to the Potter Family vault. Until then, the goblins will handle the investments._

_My father has been teaching me about money management and our family's investments for the last couple years to prepare me for when I have to take over the title of Head of the Malfoy House._

_Next question was about Sirius Black, I believe. First off, I asked my mother about how he and your father knew each other and this is what she had to tell me._

_Hogwarts had four 'Houses' and on our first night in the castle we'll be sorted into one of them. Sirius Black and James Potter were in the same year at Hogwarts and they were both sorted into Gyrffindor, so they were dorm mates for seven years. My mother told me that when he was fifteen Sirius ran away from home and moved in with the Potters. Every summer after that, instead of returning home he would go stay with James Potter. They were 'inseparable'._

_Sirius Black was your father's best man at his wedding, and was named your godfather when you were born._

_As for why Sirius Black is in Prison... well, it appears to be complicated. I think that in reality it has more to do with political alliances, biases, and subterfuge than any actual crime that Sirius Black committed. It sounds to me like he was framed and is actually innocent. He never even got a trial, he was just chucked away in Azkaban and forgotten about._

_He was accused of being a Death Eater, a spy and a traitor, but my mother is absolutely positive that he's been wrongly accused and says without a shadow of a doubt that Sirius Black would have never in a million years betrayed James Potter._

_I think that he may have been locked away without a trial just to get rid of him. You've got to understand that certain families are looked at in a certain light because of past alliances and history. The Blacks are considered a very Dark family and a great many of them were supporters of the Dark Lord during the war. Sirius Black wasn't one of them though, but the prejudice was still there. No doubt there were some people that were very against the idea of the Boy-Who-Lived ending up in the hands of a Black. They probably thought he'd raise you to be Dark or something equally ridiculous._

_Seems to me that anything would have been better than leaving you will muggles, but some people are just stupid like that._

_Officially, Sirius Black was accused of killing twelve muggles in an explosion and killing a man named Peter Pettigrew, but Pettigrew was a marked Death Eater, even if most people don't know it. Add to that the fact that Sirius never even got tried or questioned and the whole thing smells fishy to me._

_Anyway, this letter has already gotten incredibly long and my mother is calling for me to come to dinner. I'll send this one off now and I'll write you again tomorrow with some information on the war._

_One last thing – officially, we aren't allowed to do magic until school, but there's nothing stopping you from practicing potions. You can owl-order for ingredients if you don't want to use the ones you got in your school kit. Just send Hedwig off to Slug & Jiggers Apothecary and ask for their owl-order forms. You can arrange automatic payment from your bank vault too._

_Draco_

– –

Weeks progressed in much the same fashion with letters exchanged every day between the two boys. Harry had nearly blown his top at the information about his godfather. He clearly wanted there to be some way to help the man, but even Draco wasn't sure what could possibly be done. He knew that his father would never lend any of his political clout behind trying to get the man out of Azkaban, innocent or not. Not only had Lucius Malfoy  _not liked_  Sirius Black  _at all_ , but his father went to great lengths to avoid anything news worthy that could remind anyone about his supposed ties to the Death Eaters during the first war, and as far as the public was currently concerned, Sirius Black was a Death Eater.

Draco had written several letters describing what he knew about the first war to Harry. He told him about the rise of the Dark Lord and the way he had been charismatic and powerful and had made promises to many of the old families about restoring the old ways and a return to honor and complete separation from the muggle world. That he had made promises to many people, offering power and influence and luring in wizards who believed that they were fighting for a cause they believed in when in reality the Dark Lord was just using them for his own power-hungry ambitions.

Draco had no qualms describing some of the horrors the Death Eaters had perpetrated in the name of the Dark Lord because he'd seen his fair share with his own eyes.

He was grateful for the Manor's wards the prevented the Ministry's Trace from actually tattling on him because his paranoia was in overdrive during these correspondences. If he hadn't had his wand handy and known a few charms to make sure that  _only Harry_  could read the letters, he probably wouldn't have been willing to write them at all. If his father got a hold of  _any_  of those letters and read what Draco had written, he would be disowned on the spot. Or at least, he was pretty sure it would be.

In any case, Lucius Malfoy would never  _ever_  approve of his son saying such disrespectful things about the Dark Lord. But then again, Lucius Malfoy hadn't yet endured the things that Draco had witness him endure years from now. Draco didn't think that his father from his own time would object quite so readily to Draco's words.

In his correspondences Draco also admitted to Harry of his own family's connections to the Dark Lord and the role they had played in the war. He still stuck to the public story that his father had been under the Imperius curse because no matter how stupid he was being with some of the statements he made about the Dark Lord, he still wasn't stupid enough to ever admit in print – protected or not – that his father had done all those things willingly.

The mention of the Imperius had lead to another series of questions and discussions in and of itself. He'd ended up telling Potter about the Unforgivables, and more specifically, the Killing Curse and the simple fact that Harry had survived it, was reason enough to be famous, even without the fact that the Dark Lord had been seemingly destroyed that night by the rebound.

Theron and Hedwig got plenty of exercise during the month of August thanks to their constant exchanges, and Draco's parents took note of the frequent owl traffic in and out of his window. Draco's father didn't seem like he quite knew what to make of his son's friendship with the Boy-Who-Lived. On one hand, he clearly saw the potential political benefits of such a relationship and in that regard he promoted it. But the fact that Draco was writing to Potter  _so much_  seemed to bewilder him some. Draco had never been that active a writer with any of his other friends during his youth, but he'd never been particularly close to any of them and saw little point in the effort most of the time.

He saw a very valid reason for working as hard as possible to grow a friendship  _now_ , and Potter was clearly starved for friendship and information so it was easy to get him to write frequently.

Draco's mother also seemed a bit bewildered by the whole thing, but in general, also seemed to approve. She seemed to think that his new friendship was as much an attempt at achieving some independence as it was anything else.

She had helped Draco with finding the Black Family Tree and had answered a few questions here and there, but generally, Draco had avoided relaying any of Potter's questions to either of them. He didn't want them to realize just  _how much_  he was honestly telling the boy. They would no doubt expect him to be twisting the truth around and manipulating the boy the way any good Malfoy would, and the level of honesty he was relaying to the Boy-Who-Lived would no doubt horrify them.

But he knew that the only way to get Potter to trust him was honesty. He censored some things by necessity, but tried to keep it to a minimum. He had a captive audience at this moment, but once they got to Hogwarts, there would be plenty of other people around and any lies Draco told could come back to haunt him. It was why he'd come  _partially_  clean about his father. Potter would get sorted into Gryffindor while he ended up back in Slytherin and the second their friendship came out to the other Gryffindorks the insults to Draco's family would begin. No doubt Ron Weasley would not hesitate for a moment to inform Potter that Draco's father had been a Death Eater, and if Draco had kept something like that hidden from Harry... well, it would only make him question his trust in Draco and he most definitely did not want that.

All the more reason it had been so important to use this last month of summer to lay and firm a foundation for their friendship as he could manage. The real question would be whether or not the friendship could survive house rivalries and the bias of their dorm mates.

And oddly enough, Draco was finding himself honestly hoping it would survive. And not just because he needed to stay on Potter's good side to get himself and his family out of this war alive and in tact. The most shocking thing to come out of the month of August and their many letters was the realization that he was honestly coming to like Harry Potter.

While their letters were never entirely free of questions and answers, as the weeks passed the two began to just talk about themselves more and more. Potter was surprisingly clever and shockingly enough, quite funny. Draco even managed to forget a few times that he was corresponding with an eleven-year-old Potter, and not the sixteen-year-old version he'd left behind when he'd traveled through time. The boy was far too mature for his age, Draco realized, and it was no doubt a by product of his upbringing with those wretched muggles.

It became clear to Draco that Harry had absolutely no trust in adults and no respect for authority figures beyond trying to avoid getting caught in order to avoid punishment. Harry had never been coddled or pampered his entire life. Instead he was raised by jealous muggles who treated him like their own personal house elf. It was obvious that much of what Draco had been led to believe about Potter's home life was greatly misrepresented.

He'd been trying to prepare Harry for Potions mostly in an effort to lesson some of the animosity between the boy and the head of Slytherin house. He wasn't sure if it was even possible because he knew that Severus' grudge ran much deeper than Potter's poor performance in his class, but he figured it was somewhere to start. He knew that Potter was undoubtedly going to come to hate Slytherin house just like every other Gryffindor, but any efforts he could make towards reducing that hate would be worth it. In his previous timeline the two factors that most contributed towards Potter's hate of Slytherin house had been himself, and Severus Snape.

Thus, his efforts with the potions books.

In that regard, Potter seemed to be making great progress. He'd brewed a handful of potions all on his own during the month of August. They were all very simple things, and he couldn't help but notice that Potter had focused on simple healing potions. A bruise balm, a pain reliever, and a burn salve being the three he had put the most effort into. There were easier potions to make for a first year, and he had suggested them instead, but Potter said he had no use for any of them.

This told Draco that Harry  _did_  have a use for the three he had made and he could only frown down at the parchment when he'd realized that, wondering just what those muggles did to the small boy.

Guilt often filled Draco's gut as he thought back on some of the cruel and thoughtless comments he had made to the Harry Potter of his timeline during his original youth. He distinctly remembered making some petty snide remark about people staying at the castle over the holidays because they weren't wanted at home, back during their original first year.

With what he now knew, Potter had probably been relieved not to go back to his relatives over the holidays – but just the same, the reminder that his only family wanted nothing to do with him would still have stung, painfully.

But apparently those muggles  _weren't_  Potter's only family. As bizarre as it was to think, it  _was_  true that he was actually  _related_  to the Boy-Who-Lived. How odd. But then again, it really shouldn't have been that surprising. The Potters were a very old, well-respected, pureblood family, and while both the Blacks and the Malfoys generally preferred to stick to Darker families, all that really mattered in the end was purity, and the Potters fit the bill. Or at least, they did before Harry. His mud- _muggleborn_ mother had now sullied the line, but Draco had to admit that she was probably a very powerful witch, despite her poor parentage. After all, it was most likely something that Lily Potter had done that protected Harry from the Dark Lord's killing curse.

Or, at least, that was what Draco had come to assume the last few years when it became obvious to him that there was nothing all that magically powerful about Harry Potter. His class performance was average – below average, even, in some subjects. Certainly there didn't seem to be some incredible hidden power that only he possessed that had somehow saved him from the unblockable killing curse. There had appeared to be nothing all that remarkable about the Boy-Who-Lived at all, in fact, and Draco had come to the conclusion that whatever it was that was destined to defeat the Dark Lord by Potter's hands would most likely be one of his freakish 'dumb luck' things.

However... during the last week of August he and Harry exchanged a series of letters during witch they described the bouts of accidental magic they had each performed as young children. It seemed that Potter had been hesitant to talk about it at first, clearly because those damned muggles had conditioned him to believe that his 'freakish outbursts' were the most awful things in the world, and Harry had put forth a great deal of effort to keep them from happening. Despite his efforts, they happened still, and with slowly increasing power.

Accidental magic was extremely common for young witches and wizards and Draco was very acquainted with what was common and what was not. The things that Harry described to him... well they weren't  _common_  by any stretch of the imagination.

Changing the color of things wasn't that surprising, so when Harry admitted that he'd accidentally changed his teacher's hair blue once, it wasn't that shocking. What  _was_  surprising was to hear that Harry had done it when he was  _five_. The story about growing his hair back after his aunt had shaved it clean off was also rather astounding. That just was not at all normal. And the story about the time he had accidentally apparated himself onto the roof of his school at age seven? Well, to say that Draco was left speechless would be a dramatic understatement.

Accidental magic usually involved things shaking or rattling a bit. Some children, when  _really really_  upset, could crack glass. Potter had shattered windows.  _Many windows_. All when he was very very young, and only just barely old enough that he still remembered it. As he aged, he managed to prevent the shattering of windows, but there had been a few occasions where he'd shattered vases. But even more surprising was that when it had happened he'd panicked and instantly mended them back together. He had also accidentally summoned objects to his hand when he needed them, on several occasions during his younger years, but after his uncle had seen it happen when he was eight and had 'taken the switch to his back' he'd managed to stop it from happening again.

The more events he read about, the more stunned Draco became. Perhaps Harry Potter really  _could_  have been an indescribably powerful wizard – only the mistreatment by the beastly creatures he'd been left with had conditioned him against accessing that power and left his development stilted upon coming to Hogwarts.

Draco hesitantly brought the matter to his mother, revealing only what he had to, but enough for her to put the necessary pieces together. After listening to everything he had to say she came right out and said it was likely that, given Harry's unfortunate upbringing, that his magical skill in school would likely appear poor until addressed properly. A really powerful wizard with no outlet for many years would become so accustomed to holding back, that they would likely find it difficult to let that power out when needed.

 _Then_  she said something that Draco was not prepared for. She said she was going to write to Severus and ask him to look after the boy and make sure the problem was addressed in his schooling. Draco made a move to protest, but had no way of explaining, logically, why he would expect there to be any problem with his mother's suggestion. After all, what reason would he have to expect his godfather to treat Harry Potter poorly? Draco would have no way, at this point, of knowing about the rivalry that had apparently existed between Severus Snape and James Potter. So, he kept his mouth shut, and wondered what sort of repercussions this set of events would have.

He did  _not_  mention to his mother the event that Potter had described in his last letter, however. It was the story about a trip to something called a 'zoo' for his cousin's birthday. In the letter, he had confided to Draco that he had accidentally made the large glass pane on a boa constrictor's enclosure disappear, allowing the enormous serpent out and then making it reappear a moment later, trapping his cousin inside. It was during that letter that Potter told Draco that he had  _spoken_  with the snake, and that it had told him  _thanks._

Draco, of course, was already more than aware of Harry Potter's secret talent in Parseltongue, but he was not yet ready to impart that information on to his parents. He was not entirely sure what they might  _do_  with such knowledge and decided to keep it to himself. For that matter, he would probably be warning Potter as soon as possible about the stigma surrounding his skill since he was obviously ignorant of it.


	2. Chapter 2

Tampering with Time is Risky Business

Chapter 2

– –

September first finally arrived, but before leaving the manor for Hogwarts, Draco had one last thing to take care of. It was part of his great plan – the one that barely existed, in all honesty – but it was a step that he was sure needed to be taken. Even if his father would, quite literally,  _kill him_  if he ever found out.

Draco woke before the sun had even begun to peak over the horizon, and when both of his parents were still deeply asleep, and snuck down to the drawing room by wand light. He then proceeded to disable the alarms his father had on the secret door hidden behind the bookcase to the hidden room and slip down the narrow staircase that would lead to his father's secret storeroom of Dark and dangerous artifacts.

It took him nearly twenty minutes of careful searching to find the specific object he was after, and another ten minutes to even more carefully disable the alarms and wards his father had placed over the thing. If it weren't for his brief experience during the summer after his father's incarceration in Azkaban, Draco doubted he would have been able to do any of this, but at the time, he had had little choice but to learn his way around his father's wards and alarms. He was the man of the house, after all, and there were tasks that needed attending to that only he could deal with.

Finally, he had the small, innocuous black book removed and tucked into the deep pocket of his robe and he set to restoring the wards and alarms to their previous condition. He left the secret room below the drawing room about fifty minutes after he had first set out and quickly made his way back to his bedroom.

He sat on his bed looking at the book for several long minutes. It looked innocent enough, but he knew it was far from that. This book had nearly gotten his father killed, once the Dark Lord realized what had happened to it. Most of what Draco knew about it was knowledge gained by eavesdropping while hiding within the elf corridors that existed between the walls.

He knew that the little book had been responsible for what happened in his second year. His father did not know exactly what the book  _was_ , and as such, neither did Draco, but what his father  _had_  known was that allowing the book to fall into the hands of a student within Hogwarts would result in opening the Chamber of Secrets, and most likely, the death of a few muggleborns. His father had slipped the book into the possession of one of the Weasels in hopes of disgracing the family and putting an end to the elder Weasel's latest pro-muggle legislation.

The fact that his father had allowed the Dark Lord's book into the hands of a blood-traitor for entirely selfish reasons, and the fact that such a mistake had resulted in the books _destruction_  had been what had truly and utterly infuriated the Dark Lord when he finally found out about the whole debacle. The reason that Draco had stolen it, was specifically because of the Dark Lord's reaction to learning of it's destruction. The man hadn't simply been angry – which was the emotion he would entirely expect from the man if one of his precious dark artifacts was destroyed – no, what he had displayed was a moment of true, unadulterated  _fear_. Draco had seen it in the man's eyes as he peered through the one-way wall panel. The Dark Lord had been  _afraid_  by the prospect of this book being destroyed.

And thus – Draco intended to make sure it got destroyed again. Only this time, without any monsters getting loose that petrified students.

As he sat on his bed, looking down at the book, he felt the most peculiar urge to open it up and write in it. It was at the moment that he realized he had opened it up and was about to reach for a quill that he slammed it shut, stuffed it into pillow case, and quickly crammed it into the bottom of his trunk.

– –

Quite a few hours later, Draco found himself following behind his mother and father as they briskly made their way through the crowds of muggles that populated Kings Cross station in London. His father's expression was in full disgusted-sneer mode, while his mother had a rather pinched look to her face.

As they forcefully pushed their way through the crowd, Draco kept looking around, wildly searching for any sign of the short boy with ridiculously messy black hair, but was so far having no luck.

They reached the barrier between platforms nine and ten and he could tell that his father was relieved to know he was mere moments away from being rid of the muggle crowd, but Draco quickly grabbed hold of his mother's sleeve to halt her progress forward.

"What is it, dear?" she asked, looking down at him with a mild air of impatience.

"Can we wait for Harry?"

Lucius Malfoy spun around and looked at Draco as if he had lost his mind, before schooling his expression. "Are you suggestion that we remain  _here_? With the  _muggles?_ Surely Potter can find his own way through the barrier. You can wait for him on the other side."

"Well, I explained to him how to get onto the platform, but he still might have trouble. It's not like the  _muggles_  are going to be able to help him," Draco insisted as he continued to twist and turn his head around, searching for the boy.

"Draco, dear, I'm sure that Mr. Potter will be perfectly capable of getting onto the platform. If not, he will no doubt find someone who can help him," his mother insisted in as soft and reassuring a tone as she could manage while also looking disgusted and impatient by the presence of so many muggles.

Draco grimaced at her words. That was what he was afraid of, if he were honest. He knew that Potter had met Weasley because the tribe of gingers had assisted him onto the train. Granted, he knew he couldn't prevent Potter from meeting the Weasleys, and chances are that he would end up being friends with the stupid pauper again, no matter what he did, but he still couldn't help but want to postpone the inevitable.

He tried whining a bit, but that only seemed to irritate his already irritable parents further, and finally he conceded and pushed his trolly through the barrier.

Draco briefly looked around the still sparsely populated platform on the off chance that Harry had actually gotten here before him, but after a few minutes of searching he was convinced he had gotten here first. He and his mother parked his troller not far from the archway entrance to platform 9 ¾ while his father made a bee-line for a few of his colleagues from the Ministry that were already there with their children.

Draco knew it was likely that at some point during the next twenty minutes Greg and Vince would be brought to him and deposited in his care by their parents. The senior Goyle and Crabbe had been his father's lap dogs for more than a decade, and it was expected that their progenies would fulfill the same duty for Draco.

He wasn't entirely sure what he was going to do with them this time around. He'd never really considered them 'friends'. Neither of them were really smart enough for that. He'd been friends with Theo and Pansy and Blaise, but Greg and Vince had mostly been his... well, his  _servants_. At least... that was how he'd treated them.

He definitely didn't want the pair of them trailing him around everywhere like a pair of lost puppies. He didn't need them to protect him because his own knowledge in magical defense far outweighed their usefulness as physical bodyguards. And he had a distinct suspicion that Harry would not be particularly impressed by them. They would no doubt remind the small boy of some of those muggle bullies he'd reluctantly admitted had terrorized him at his cousin's behest.

Draco decided to put his worries about Crabbe and Goyle out of his mind for the time being and instead focus on finding Harry. Therefore, he was greatly relieved when a blurred trolly came running through the archway, featuring an owl cage holding a familiar snowy white owl, followed immediately by a familiar shock of messy black hair.

He let out a sigh of relief at the sight of the small boy, and found himself smiling brightly as his friend stumbled to a stop and took his first startled look around the platform. Those expressive green eyes looked even more shockingly brilliant without the ugly broken glasses to mask them, and they grew in size at the stunning sight of the red, gleaming, Hogwarts Expression standing before him. After Harry had spent a stunned minute gawking over the magical steam engine his eyes jerked away and quickly began to search the now-crowded platform. His eyes almost instantly locked on Draco and a stunning smile broke out on his face.

"Draco!" he called out and waved one hand in the air. Before even consciously deciding to return the gesture, he found himself eagerly waving his arm in return. He caught himself and quickly pulled his arm back down before glancing up at his mother out of the corner of his eyes. She was looking down at him with tightly concealed amusement shining in her eyes, while her lips were pressed into a tight line. Public behavior of such a nature was just not the Malfoy way, and if his father had seen him doing it, he would have been in for a considerable scolding. He was grateful that his mother wasn't making a scene.

Harry rushed at pushing his loaded trolly over to Draco and his mother and quickly greeted the two of them. He thanked Draco for telling him how to get through the barrier in his last letter; mentioning that he never would have been able to figure it out on his own from the ticket alone.

"Well, Draco, now that you've found your friend, do you suppose you're finally willing to board the train?" his mother asked airily and he felt his cheeks pinken slightly as he quickly nodded his head and apologized for the delay.

His father made his way back at that point, apparently having noticed that they had been joined by the Boy-Who-Lived. Proper introductions were quickly made and Harry did an admirable job of not embarrassing himself in front of Draco's father. He looked a lot better today than he had that day at Diagon Alley. He was wearing neat, pressed, black trousers that fit him nicely, and a straight-collared, white, button down shirt. Instead of ratty old trainers, he even had polished black Oxfords and Draco wondered when he'd bought those since they didn't sell shoes at Madam Malkin's.

The lack of the unsightly round, black, and sellotaped glasses was also quite an improvement, even if Potter's hair was just as much of a mess as ever.

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Potter," Lucius Malfoy was saying in his usual disinterested drawl. "Draco has spoken highly of you over the course of the last month. In fact, there were times when it seemed he spoke of little else, besides your correspondences." At this he gave Draco a rather pointed look, and he instantly diverted his gaze to the floor, feeling his father's irritation in his piercing eyes.

If Harry noticed any of this, he didn't mention it, and instead he proceeded to gush a little bit about how grateful he was for all of Draco's help over the past month. Finally the crowds on the platform began to thin as people started to make their way onto the train and the group made to follow.

Draco's father pulled his wand out of the top of his cane and with a few flourished waves of his wand both of their trunks levitated into the air and into the train car that they had chosen near the back. Once levitated, the two of them were able to push the trunks into a compartment and got them settled into the overhead storage before going over and pushing the window open. Draco leaned out and waved to his parents. His mother gushed and reached up to grab his hand and squeeze it for a moment, which was as much of a public display of affection as she was willing to make with Lucius there.

She then waved at Harry and wished him well, which caused Potter to blush with apparent surprise and pleasure. What seemed like mere moments later, they were sitting down in the compartment, sighing quietly as the train pulled out of the station and began it's journey north.

They settled into conversation with surprising ease; picking up from their last exchange of letters as if they'd been talking in person for the last month instead of by quill. The excited, nervous air around Harry was contagious. Draco wasn't nervous for exactly the same reason, since he'd made the journey to Hogwarts for years now and knew pretty much exactly what to expect, where as Harry was nervous because his life was about to drastically change and everything was new to him.

They remained alone for all of fifteen minutes before a face peered in through the glass window of the sliding door to their compartment and then quickly pulled the door open.

"There you are!" an exasperated voice exclaimed.

Draco looked up and found himself blinking at a shockingly  _young_  Pansy Parkinson. It was startling to see her as such a small girl again. Short black hair, cut in a bob hair style, pale freckles dusting her pale cheeks, and her little up-turned nose that she'd always been sensitive about because people often told her she looked like a pug because of it. She'd always sounded a bit nasally in her youth too, which didn't help much.

"Pansy!" Draco exclaimed, because he just didn't know what else to say in his moment of stunned silence.

"Here! Take these too! When they couldn't find you, they opted to follow me around because they didn't know what else to do," she said in an annoyed voice as she stepped back into the hall and pushed the two over-sized boys that had become his personal goons for the majority of his original Hogwarts years, into the compartment.

"Will you join us?" Draco asked, desperately hoping that she would because he didn't think he could stand the compartment if he was left to babysit Crabbe and Goyle with only Harry there for assistance.

"Well... maybe. I was actually planning to go find Theo."

"Well if you find him, bring him here," Draco insisted quickly.

She looked around the compartment skeptically. "Won't it get a bit... full, if we do that? That'd make six of us and these two aren't exactly small," she said with a jerk of her chin towards Crabbe and Goyle.

"There are charms on the compartments so that they will expand in size to hold as many people as you need, up to a certain point. You just have to tap your wand on a certain spot, and the whole thing stretches with a space expansion charm."

"Really? That's neat," Pansy said, looking around the compartment with curiosity. Then her gaze landed on Harry and the curiosity grew. "Who's this, then?"

"This is my friend. I met him a month ago in Diagon Alley and we've been exchanging post ever since," here Draco paused and pinned Pansy with a  _look_ , "Don't make a fuss," he said in a stern, commanding voice before continuing. "Pansy Parkinson, meet Harry Potter."

Pansy's eyes went  _wide_ and her lips parted in a silent gasp before she schooled her expression into a sweet smile instead and extended her hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Oh, uh, p-pleasure to meet you too," Harry said quickly as he quickly rubbed his hand on his pant leg and then reached out and shook her hand.

"And this is Vincent Crabbe and Greg Goyle," Draco continued as he waved to the two large boys who were now sitting on the bench opposite Harry and Draco.

"Nice to meet you, too," Harry said with a nod to each. They sort of grunted in return. "So how do you all know each other? Did you go to primary school together or something?"

"Our families travel in the same social circles," Pansy said, airily in a tone much like her mother often used and Draco found himself unable to refrain from rolling his eyes slightly.

Seeing that Harry didn't entirely understand what she'd said, Draco explained about the many Ministry galas, family balls, and the gatherings for 'tea' – or in reality, to gossip – that their mothers did at least once a month, and ow they would usually all end up stuffed away into a playroom to entertain themselves while their mother's chattered away. He also pointed out that they had all been schooled by private tutors, rather than attending any sort of organized school system. Hogwarts would be a first for them in that regard.

During this talk, Pansy had settled down on the bench, with Harry in the middle and Draco on the side near the window. She'd taken to enthusiastically fill in the details of their 'play dates' over the years, making them sound like a far more common thing that Draco felt was true. In all honesty, before Hogwarts, he'd barely known any of his future friends. They'd be more acquaintances at this point. Yet Pansy managed to retell quite a few amusing and rather embarrassing stories about their youthful exploits in Malfoy Manor that Draco had nearly forgotten all about.

"Do wizards have schools for young children, or do they all get private tutors like you lot did?" Harry asked, at one point.

"Well a great many are home schooled by their mothers," Pansy replied in a bit of a know-it-all tone that made Draco smirk and roll his eyes again.

"But what if the mother works?" Harry asked.

"Then there are small schooling groups that they can send them to. A lot of the time, one of the witches in a wizarding village will take in the children of her neighbors during the day and school the lot of them in one go right along with her own children. And then there are  _some people_ ," she said the last two words as if the 'some people' she were talking about where the lowest of low, "who actually send their children off to  _muggle_  schools to learn their letters and maths. But I can't imagine how they could stand being around all those muggle children, and they'd learn nothing of our history and culture that way." She shuddered in an over-dramatic fashion.

Draco noticed the obvious sign of Potter's embarrassment in the slight pinkening of his cheeks and the way he ducked his head and hunched his shoulders, ever-so-slightly.

"Harry was left with muggles after his parents died, so he had to go to a muggle primary school," Draco said in a dismissive tone. "It's unfortunate, but sometimes these things just can't be helped. So I've made it my duty this last month to help get him as up to speed on our ways as possible."

"You grew up with muggles?" Pansy gasped. For a moment, Draco was afraid she were about to start treating him as if he were a maggot beneath her boot, like she would have to Potter in his old timeline, but instead she took on the most pitying look and moaned out, "Oh you poor thing. You must feel so out of the loop. That sure explains why you didn't know..." She trailed off and then switched to a determined grin. "Well then, I'll just make it my duty as well to help you out. We'll get you sorted out, don't you worry."

Harry just gaped at her like a fish out of water before closing his mouth and giving her a confused, muted nod.

Draco felt equally stunned and confused if he were honest with himself. Pansy had always been one of the most outspoken Slytherins against Potter and his band of Gryffindorks. She was always apt to point out the fact that he was a filthy halfblood with his mudblood mother. Of course, Draco had been the one who spout all that stuff first – she just picked up where he started and carried it on with enthusiastic vigor. Was his apparent approval and acceptance of Potter all that was needed to make the others welcome him as well?

If it were that simple then perhaps his task wouldn't be as hard as he feared. The real question was whether or not they'd all still be willing to put up with Harry once he was sorted into Gryffindor.

Pansy took to her 'task' with great enthusiasm. Mostly, Draco figured she just enjoyed hearing herself speak, and so he allowed her to do so. She spent much of the next hour running through as many stupid little details to wizarding life that Draco had honestly never considered important enough to bother mentioning to Harry in his letters, but in retrospect, were still important to understand the greater picture.

During that hour, Theo actually found  _them_  and joined them at Pansy's insistence. Harry Potter was introduced to Theodore Nott, and Pansy quickly explained the situation to the stringy boy with a dismissive attitude, that silently spoke volumes about how the group of purebloods had chosen to approach this situation. He seemed a bit unsure about sitting in a compartment with the Boy-Who-Lived – especially a Boy-Who-Lived that was muggle-raised – for all of five minutes, before Harry's open and curious personality sucked him into the conversation.

Crabbe and Goyle mainly remained quiet through most of it. Amusingly enough, Harry tried to draw the two of them into the conversation several times, and even more shocking, he'd gotten them to respond.

The trolly witch came by and they loaded up on sweets. Harry looked at the assortment of sugary confections with wide, glowing eyes and ended up buying at least one of everything. The hour after that was spent telling Potter about every one of the sweets, and each of them getting him to try different things.

More time passed and the group was finally interrupted by a knocking on their compartment door. It slid open a moment later to reveal Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom – both shockingly young, just like everyone else.

Draco grimaced slightly at the sight of the two of them. Longbottom looked pathetic in his short, chubby, round-faced state, but mostly it was his slouched stature and ducked head that screamed 'pathetic' above all else. He was also startled by the sudden reminder of just how  _big_  Granger's two front teeth had been at eleven.

"Excuse me, but have any of you seen a toad? Neville's lost one," Granger said importantly as she looked around their crowded compartment.

Seeing that Pansy was one breath away from a disparaging remark and knowing that it was likely that Harry would probably make friends with these two once he was sorted into Gryffindor, he spoke first.

"Have you tried asking a Prefect for help? They can just summon the thing for you," Draco drawled lazily.

"They can summon it?" Granger said, looking equal parts surprised and fascinated. "I didn't even think of that."

"Of course you didn't," Draco said with a slightly sarcastic edge and a sigh.

"B-but what if he's in a closed compartment?" Longbottom said in a shaky, quiet, and utterly pathetic voice from behind Granger.

"Well then he'll end up flattened against the window of the compartment and who ever is in it will, ideally, open the door and let him out," Draco drawled and rolled his eyes dramatically.

"Oh," Longbottom said as his cheeks went pink. "Erm, well... thanks," he mumbled as he turned and backed out of the compartment doorway.

Granger hesitated for a moment and Draco suspected she wanted to question him about the summoning suggestion, but then she seemed to realize that she could ask more, and get an actual demonstration, if she just followed Longbottom to a prefect instead.

"Well, thank you for your suggestion. You'd best be getting changed into your robes, you know. We'll be there soon. Bye."

And with that, she turned and left as well. Pansy made some annoyed remark about being Granger; obviously annoyed at having been told to change. Despite this fact, Granger's advice was not ignored. Draco and Harry both had their trunks in the compartment they'd all gathered in, so all they had to do was open their trunks and grab their robes. The others, however, had their belongings elsewhere and they all departed to return to their original compartments in order to change.

Quick goodbyes were said and moments later Draco was left alone with Harry again. Realizing suddenly that he wasn't likely to have another chance to speak with the shorter boy again, alone, for some time, Draco quickly spoke.

"Hey, Harry? I was meaning to speak to you about this earlier, but then Pansy and everyone else showed up, and I didn't want to mention it when anyone else was around," Draco started hesitantly.

Harry looked up at him with mild concern in his eyes. "Oh? What is it?"

"Well, in your last letter you mentioned that incident with the snake during your cousin's birthday thing?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"You said that you  _spoke_  with the snake? That it told you 'thanks'?"

"That's right," Harry said, nodding his head slowly and looking at Draco with a confused expression.

"Well... you should probably avoid mentioning that to anyone else."

A frown suddenly marred Harry's face. "What? Why?"

"Speaking to snakes is an... unusual skill," Draco said, hesitantly.

"Well, at the time I thought that maybe I'd imagined the whole thing, but after all of... well  _this_ , I figured wizards must be able to speak to all kinds of animals."

Draco slowly shook his head. "You'd think that... but they can't. When you speak to a snake... it sounds like English to you, right?"

"That's right," Harry said with a nod.

"Well, it only sounds that way  _to you_. To anyone else near by who might be listening, it would just sound like hissing. You're actually speaking another language when you do it. A magical language that only you and other parselmouths can speak."

"Speaking another language?" Harry echoed incredulously. "How can you be sure that's what I was doing?"

"I just..." Draco's voice trailed off with a tinge of frustration. He glanced around quickly before going over to the compartment door and pulling the shade down. He then pulled out his wand and cast a locking spell, and a privacy spell.

He turned back to look at Harry for a hesitant moment before giving a small determined nod. "I'm going to summon a snake. You can't tell anyone about this, okay?"

Harry frowned and looked even more confused now than before but he nodded his head. "Okay. I won't tell."

Draco nodded and aimed his wand at the floor of the compartment. He focused on the mental image of a small garden snake before flourishing his wand and saying " _Serpent Sortia!"_

A small snake shot out of the tip of his wand and landed on the floor in front of him.

Harry gasped at the display of magic before looking down at the snake on the floor with an air of awe.

"That's so cool. Where'd you learn that spell?" Harry asked.

"My godfather taught it to me," Draco said with a sigh of relief as he noted that the snake was what he intended – a small and harmless little garter snake. He had been worried he'd summon something a bit less friendly and considerably more dangerous simply by virtue of habit and practice. He'd never used the spell to summon a  _harmless_  snake before.

Taking in a calming breath Draco refocused on Harry. "Okay, now look at the snake –  _focus_  on the snake, and try talking to it."

Harry looked rather skeptical but he crouched down in front of the bench seat so he was closer to the little snake currently coiled into a small protective ball on the floor of their compartment and opened his mouth.

When Draco heard the all too familiar hissing sound emerge from Harry's mouth, it sent a shudder down his spine. He had only ever witnessed Harry Potter speaking parseltongue that one time in his second year, but he'd heard the Dark Lord speak it quite frequently, and he did not entirely associate it with pleasant things.

It was honestly quite unsettling to hear Potter speak it, if he was quite honest with himself. And yet, the longer Harry did it, the easier it became for Draco to tell the difference between Harry speaking it and the Dark Lord doing it.

Harry was clearly engrossed in a conversation with the snake, and he seemed a bit enthusiastic, Draco noticed. His voice seemed interested and light, despite the strange hissing sounds. Nothing like the menacing and downright terrifying sound that the Dark Lord created when he used the language.

Finally the hissing subsided and Harry looked up at Draco with a confused, expectant expression. Draco just blinked at him with his own air of confusion.

"Would that be okay?" Harry asked and Draco just continued to look at him in confusion for a moment.

"Would what be okay?" He finally asked.

"I mean, is she permanent, or will your spell wear off and she'll go back where ever she came from?"

"What are you talking about?" Draco asked. "And she is permanent if I don't banish her back," he amended quickly.

"Really? Well that's good. And... what do you mean, what am I talking about? Weren't you listening?"

"No, Harry. I couldn't understand a thing you were saying. I told you, to everyone but you, it just sounds like hissing."

Harry opened his mouth, but nothing came out at first. He just looked shocked. "Wait, really?"

"Yes, really."

"But... I mean, it sounds just like English."

"To  _you_ , sure. But that's because you're a parselmouth."

"What's a parselmouth?"

"Someone who has the inherent magical ability to speak to snakes. It's a magical ability that's usually passed down through blood lines.  _Normally_ , the only way a wizard could be one is if one of their parents had been one."

"Was my dad one?"

"I  _highly_  doubt it. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that he  _wasn't_. There's never been any history of the Potters being parselmouths."

Harry reached down and scooped the snake up into his hands before shifting over and sitting back down on the bench – now with the snake in his lap. He absently started stroking one finger down the snake's back, just behind it's head, and Draco nearly did a double-take. It was just such a  _weird_  thing to even imagine Harry Potter handling a snake...

"Well, if my dad wasn't a parselmouth... how come I'm one?" Harry was saying, and his words pulled Draco's attention away from the snake in his lap.

"Well..." Draco began hesitantly, "I  _think_  it... just might...  _possibly_ , have something to do with... er...  _that."_ Draco said as he finally reached out and poked Harry in the forehead, just over his scar.

Harry frowned and his hand froze. "What do you mean?" he asked in a quiet whisper.

"The Dark Lord was one. A parselmouth, I mean. He could speak to snakes. They say he was a descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself. Slytherin's line was the most well known for carrying the trait. It's why the mascot for Slytherin house at Hogwarts is a snake."

"But why would I be able to speak to snakes because of  _this_?" he said, motioning up towards his scar.

Draco shrugged and let out a slightly frustrated sigh. "I really don't know. I mean... what you've got there is a curse scar. It's not just a  _normal_  scar. It's probably still got some magic residue left in it, even though it's been a decade since you got it. I wouldn't be surprised if you got some of the Dark Lord's power or something, back when his curse blew up in his own face.

"The killing curse normally just  _kills_  you. They say that it terrifies you to death, but physically, it deals no damage at all. People who die by the killing curse leave a completely unmaimed body behind, but if the stories are true, the Dark Lord's body was obliterated that night. Totally gone. Nothing but robes and ashes left. If he were taken out simply by a rebounded killing curse, his body would have been fine, but it wasn't, so there had to be more going on than anyone knows.

"I've heard stories of rebounded curses going bad and causing a feedback loop. Where the curse is connected between the target and the caster's wand and a magical connection forming there, locking the two together until the power gets too much to handle and everything just explodes. But while the magic connects the two, all sorts of weird things can happen. You could have gotten some of his power that night. It would explain why all your accidental magic is so outrageously advanced, and why it was happening at such a young age and with such frequency."

Harry looked horrified and sick. Finally he seemed to swallow something thick in his throat and looked back up at Draco. "You really think I could have some of his power?" he whispered, still looking entirely ill at ease with such a concept.

"It would explain a few things," Draco said with a shrug. "Most specifically, the parselmouth thing."

"Is that why you don't think I should tell anyone about it? Because the Dark Lord was a parselmouth?"

Draco nodded hesitantly. "Yeah... mostly. I mean, parseltongue has got a bit of a bad rep. The most well known parselmouths were all pretty nasty dark wizards. So it's got a rather negative stigma around it. Some people might make judgments and act biased just because they're ignorant."

Harry was frowning deeply but nodded his head as if he really did understand. "Then I guess it would probably be a bad idea for me to keep her, wouldn't it?" He asked with a rueful smile as he looked down at the snake still resting in his lap.

"Is that what you were talking about earlier?" Draco asked.

"Yeah. She said she'd be willing to stay with me because she was curious about wizards."

The snake's head moved slightly and Harry's attention zeroed in on the snake again for a moment. He blushed slightly all of a sudden, but then hissed out a response to whatever it was the snake had said.

"What'd she say?" Draco asked, feeling obscenely curious.

"She said it would be a great honor to become a companion to a 'speaker', but she understands if I can't keep her."

"Did she understand what we were saying earlier? I mean, when we were speaking English?" Draco asked, honestly startled.

Harry nodded. "Seems that way, yes."

"Oh." Draco replied, surprised.

Suddenly, the  _sonarus-_ enhanced voice of the train's conductor filled the compartment, announcing that they would be pulling into Hogsmeade station in a minute and to leave trunks and pet cages on the train.

Harry looked down at the snake with a slightly sad expression and Draco honestly wished for a moment that Harry could keep the little thing, but knew that a pet snake would  _never_ go over well in Gryffindor. Plus the whole point of bringing all of this up was to make sure Potter was discreet about the parseltongue thing.

Finally, Harry gave Draco the go-ahead to banish the snake back to where ever she had come from. He hissed something that Draco assumed was a 'goodbye' before putting her back on the floor. Draco did a quick simple wave of his wand and the snake vanished.

The next twenty minutes passed in a blur for Draco. It was like deja vu in part, and yet totally different in another.

He and Harry exited the train and gathered with the other first years around Hagrid. They then followed the group down a narrow trail to the edge of the lake where they all got into little boats. He and Harry got into a boat with Crabbe and Goyle, because the two boys looked lost during the half minute where it appeared that he didn't intend to sit with them. He realized he was joining them entirely out of pity and the though irritated him greatly.

Harry gasped and awe'd along with the rest of them when Hogwarts first came into view, and Draco found himself smiling at it with a stupidly-sappy sense of sentimentality that nearly made him grimace in self disgust.

The group reached the shore and then followed the large oaf across the grounds and up to the entrance of Hogwarts, where he banged on the door three times and was then greeted with the stern face of Minerva McGonagall. She took over the group of first-years and led them into the small antechamber just off the Great Hall and gave the exact same speech as she had the first time Draco had done all of this.

She left the room; the stupidly wild theories about the sorting began to spread, and were then promptly cut off by shrieks as the school's house ghosts floated through the room, causing quite a scare amongst the muggleborn in the room that had never seen a ghost before.

Finally McGonagall came back and had them all form a straight line before leading them into the Great Hall. Draco had told Harry was the sorting  _actually was_  back in one of his letters, and he had seen the slight amusement in the shorter boy's eyes as Ron Weasley recounted to Seamus Finnigan the line his two psychotic brother's had fed him about fighting a troll. Now they walked one after the other into the great all and Potter looked far less stressed than some of the others, and not at all surprised when the Sorting Hat came into view sitting on the three-legged stood in front of the head table.

They came to a stop; the hat sang a song; the hall applauded; and the sorting began.

"Abbot, Hannah!" McGonagall called out, and things progressed from there, exactly as they had before. Not that he had been paying all that much attention the first time around, but he'd gone to school with these people for more than five years; he knew which houses they'd ended up in.

He noticed this time around that Granger was under the hat for a bit longer than most of the other kids. He knew from the stories he'd heard from others that it was possible to actually have a conversation with the sorting hat while it sat on your head. He didn't actually know this from experience since the hat had quite literally been on his head for half a second before it called out with absolute certainty that he belonged in Slytherin. Still – knowing what he did about Granger, he suspected that they were having some sort of debate between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. He'd always wondered how on earth she'd ended up in the lion's den when she was so clearly meant for the eagle's nest.

The outcome was the same as it had been before though, and the hat finally called out  _"Gryffindor!"_

When Draco's name was finally called, he glanced over at Harry one last time, wondering if their friendship would survive this evening, and finding himself honestly hoping that it would. Harry gave him a reassuring smile and a quick nod. Feeling his own tremulous smile faltering under his nerves he turned and headed up to the small stool. His eyes caught Severus' and the man gave him a curt nod. Draco sat down on the stool and watched as McGonagall lowered the hat onto his head and the great hall was suddenly blocked as the oversized had impeded his vision.

Unlike last time, the hat did  _not_  instantly call out Slytherin the second it touched his head.

" _Well, well... isn't this interesting,"_ a voice that  _wasn't_  his said inside his mind.

He stiffened as he suddenly realized that this hat could very well realize –

" _It's been decades since the last student with the gal to meddle with time crossed my path,"_ the hat said with what sounded like amusement in his mental voice.

Draco felt his blood chill but just as suddenly the words the hat had spoken registered.  _"You've come across others who have done this?"_

" _Of course I have. Do you honestly think you've accomplished something so rare and unusual? Meddling with time may be illegal, but it's hardly all that difficult. The only troublesome part is actually tracking down the information necessary to do it."_

The world  _illegal_  sent another chill through him and he was suddenly terrified that he was about to get reported to the Ministry and carted off to Azkaban, or kissed by a dementor.

" _Slow down there, child. No need to hyperventilate. I suggest we focus on more pressing matters – like getting you sorted. Now... where to put you? I see that you went to Slytherin last time, but you're not quite the same person you were the first time, anymore, are you?"_

" _You can't possibly be suggesting that you would put me somewhere else?"_  Draco mentally exclaimed, utterly horrified by the prospect. The only reason he'd gotten away with his friendship with Harry Potter so far, in his father's eyes, was because the man honestly believed that Draco was  _using_  the other boy. That he was trying to make connections with potentially inflluencial peers, and the fact that Potter was so obviously naïve only made it that much easier to make it look like Draco was taking advantage of him. But if he were sorted into one of the other houses...  _"Um, I don't suppose you're thinking of Ravenclaw, are you?"_  Draco tried, doubtfully.

The hat actually  _chuckled_  at him and he felt the queasy horror in his stomach increase.

" _Oh, no. The eagle's nest isn't for you – although you certainly value knowledge, and have a hunger for expanding your own spell repertoire that would rival some in Rowena's house, your motives for doing so are more for gaining greater respect and power than for the sake of the knowledge itself."_

" _But doesn't that just show how obviously I belong in Slytherin? Ambition and cunning is what being Slytherin is all about! That's me to a 'T'!"_ Draco argued frantically because he knew that only two other options remained, and neither was acceptable.

" _Ah, but Gryffindor is known for the traits of daring, nerve, and courage – sometimes to the point of recklessness. Can you possible think of anything that takes more nerve and courage, and the daring of the fiercest and most reckless of lions, than going back and meddling with time? I know you did not take such an action without knowing of the risks involved, and you know that they are great. Even more worthy of note is you choosing to take this action with the intention of setting things right, correcting past misdeeds, and saving your family from suffering and death?"_

Draco felt his jaw floundering and could put together no coherent words – even mentally – for he was simply too stunned and horrified.  _Gryffindor?_  The bloody hat was considering putting him in  _Gryffindor?_

A thought suddenly passed through his mind in regards to Harry. If he were to be sorted into Gryffindor then there would be far fewer obstacles in his way in forging a strong friendship with the Boy-Who-Lived. And while his father would be horrified and desperately disappointed in him in the immediate future, this change would increase his chances of saving his family from the terrible fate that would befall them if they were to follow the Dark Lord again.

But all his past alliances would be worthless. None of the Slytherin's would trust him. Hell, none of them would  _respect_  him, and he knew that was what would hurt the most. And it was unlikely that the other Gryffindors would trust him either simply because of his family name.

_Merlin, this was insane!_

" _You cannot be serious?"_  Draco exclaimed desperately.

" _Oh, I'm quite serious. I do believe I know just where to put you. It better be..._  GRYFFINDOR!"the had said, speaking the last word out loud.

Draco felt as if his heart had just stopped beating. His mouth went dry and for a brief moment, he feared he would faint. This simply could  _not_  be happening. He'd gone back in time to change some things, but this was not one of them!

Shakily, he reached up and dislodged the hat from his head and handed it to the deputy headmistress, who he suddenly realized would be his new head of house. She accepted it and while her expression did not give away any emotions in particular, her brows were slightly higher in her forehead than was quite normal.

As he slipped off the stool and found his footing, he was pulled suddenly out of his stunned stupor by the sound of excited clapping. His head rose and his eyes darted over to the source. It was Harry. He was smiling brightly and clapping for him. He almost wanted to laugh at how ridiculous the situation he found himself in, was.

A moment later, the occupants of the Gryffindor table began to clap as well, although it was hardly what Draco would consider enthusiastic. As he made his way over to the sea of red and gold on shaky legs, he was distinctly aware of the wary and surprised looks on the faces of several of the students from older families. He sat down heavily feeling numb and seriously off kilter. He felt as if all of his plans were suddenly thrown out the window and he was flying blind, but then he had to admit that he really didn't have much in the way of a plan for all of this. His plan had basically been to just make his way through his school years while maintaining a positive standing in the eye of Harry Potter and trying to make what few changes he was aware of that might help set a few more odds against the Dark Lord.

Now... now he felt like he didn't know what he was doing at all.

He finally pulled himself out of his stupor in order to return his focus to the sorting. Considering how close M and P were in the alphabet, you wouldn't expect there to be so damned many students called after him and before Potter, but it felt as if it just kept going  _on and on_. Moon, Murray, Nott, Parkinson, Patil and Patil, Perks, and finally –

"Potter, Harry!" McGonagall called out and whispers filled the great hall almost instantly. People were suddenly craning their heads and turning their necks around other people; all trying to get a look at the famous Boy-Who-Lived, who was clearly uncomfortable under their scrutiny and whispers as he hunched his shoulders slightly, ducked his head, and hurried forward to the little stool and hat.

Draco sat on the edge of his seat with baited breath as Harry sat on the stool beneath the oversized brown wizards hat for what felt like an eternity. Had Potter's sorting taken this long the last time? Draco wasn't even sure. He was hardly paying attention at the time. Harry had already scorned him by that point, and he was sitting at the Slytherin table, preening, and acting the arrogant little prat he was at age eleven.

Draco hesitantly let his gaze travel to the Slytherin table at that moment. All of his previous life's friends were already there – except for Zabini, who would get sorted last. Pansy was there. Theo was there. Crabbe and Goyle, who he now suddenly realized looked absolutely bewildered and lost. What would they do without him there to order them around and tell them what to do? Maybe they'd actually develop a bit of self-reliance and learn to do a few things for themselves. That, or they'd fail all their classes.

His eyes met Pansy's and her brows rose into her forehead and a silent, but clearly stated question passed through her eyes. She was obviously shocked, but he doubted she could be nearly as shocked as he was.

Theo noticed her gaze and looked over as well. He was frowning, but it wasn't a hateful or disgusted expression, like he had feared. Mostly, he just looked... bewildered.

Some hushed murmers called Draco's attention away from the Slytherins and he turned his head back towards the front of the great hall just as the hat wiggled a bit, opened the rip in it that acted as a mouth and called out, "GRYFFINDOR!"

Draco heaved out a sign of relieve that he hadn't realized he was holding, and then immidiately chided himself for it. No one's else's sorting had changed at all. Only  _his_. He'd already known that Harry was destined for Gryffindor, so why would that have changed?

The inhabitants of the Gryffindor table erupted in applause and shouting while the Weasley twins started chanting "We got Potter! We got Potter!"

The sudden realization that he was now in the same house as all of the  _Weasley's_  did not aid in already unsettled stomach, but his nerves were suddenly quelled as Potter rushed over and sat down directly beside him, giving him a bright smile.

"That was kind of close," Potter whispered directly in his ear as he leaned in close.

"Kind of close? What do you mean?" Draco asked, honestly confused by whatever Potter was talking about.

"The hat wanted to put me in Slytherin," he whispered as he ducked his head slightly and gave Draco a bashful grin. "You know, I was really stunned you ended up in Gryffindor. From your letters you sounded pretty positive you'd end up in Slytherin."

Draco felt too stunned by Potter's admission to know what to say for several seconds. The hat had wanted to put Potter into  _Slytherin?_  Had it wanted to do that in his original timeline? He realized he would never know, but it was a shocking concept. Rationally, he wasn't that surprised. In the last month while getting to know the boy, he had displayed quite a few Slytherin traits; especially in regards to deal with his relatives. But his courage, loyalty, and his sense of justice was pure Gryffindor.

Finally, Draco choked out a response. "Yeah, well... I'm pretty surprised by it too. If I'm being honest, I'm a bit worried about how my father will handle it."

Harry's smile subdued at that and he gave Draco an understanding nod but didn't say anything. The sorting went on and most conversation in the hall was gone except for the occasional quietly whispered conversation. Finally Draco couldn't stand it any longer and turned into Harry again to speak.

"The hat really wanted to put you in Slytherin?" he asked.

Harry shrugged bashfully but nodded his head.

"Why did it put you in Gryffindor then?"

"Er... I kind of asked it to. It said I could have gone to either, really. It gave me the choice."

Well, that didn't surprise him, he supposed. And the fact that Potter chose Gryffindor wasn't surprising at all. It was his father's house after all, and it didn't come with any of the stigma that loomed over Slytherin house like a thick gray fog, for having churned out a couple of Dark Lords over the last few centuries.

"I mean, I really didn't have any problems with going into Slytherin, and Pansy and Theo seemed really nice this morning on the train, but it's  _you_  who I actually know, you know?" Harry continued on, pulling Draco out of his musings. "I get that a lot of the bad things people say about Slytherin house is just people being biased, and it's really not fair to judge the whole house by a few bad apples, so I wasn't going to let any of that stuff I've heard decide for me which house I went to. So instead I... well, I guess I just wanted to be in the same house as my friend. If I could fit in either one, then in the end, I figured it came down to which house I already knew someone in, and that was you and Gryffindor. So that's where I asked it to put me."

Draco's jaw dropped and he gaped at Harry for longer than was socially acceptable. Which he realized, and quickly snapped his jaw shut.

Harry had picked Gryffindor for  _him?_  A sudden realization sparked to life in Draco's mind and he wondered if the reason Harry had ended up in Gryffindor in Draco's original timeline was because he'd specifically asked to be put in whatever house Draco  _wasn't_  in, therefore he ended up in Gryffindor instead of Slytherin with Draco. It was fairly obvious from even before the sorting that Draco had already made Potter loath him utterly. Was his snotty little attitude what had decided for Potter which house he ended up in?

This revelation that Harry, in  _this timeline_ had chosen to follow him to Gryffindor, also meant that if Draco had ended up in Slytherin, Harry probably would have followed him there as well.  _Harry Potter in Slytherin_! Merlin, Draco couldn't even imagine the complications that would have caused! If he thought his plans had been skewed and complicated by his shift in houses, he couldn't even fathom how messed up his plans would have been, had Potter ended up in the snake pit.

Their conversation died away as Dean Thomas was sorted into Gryffindor and the applause around them filled the air. Harry applauded enthusiastically with the rest of the house while Draco barely managed to put any legitimate effort behind it. Dean Thomas. He was a mud- _muggleborn –_   _Merlin_  he needed to work on that... that just would  _not_  fly in Gryffindor house – and he would be one of Draco's new dorm mates.

He was going to be a Gryffindor. He was going to be... a...  _Gryffindor!_

He realized he was in some form of shock. Some part of him was quite literally convinced that he was dreaming. That this was all an elaborate nightmare.

A nightmare that only got worse a few minutes later when Ron Weasley was sorted into Gryffindor and greeted enthusiastically by his twin-menace brothers.

He was going to have to share a room with  _Ron Weasley._ The mere concept horrified him. He wanted to burry his head in the dirt, go to sleep, and wake up to discover this was all a terrible dream. But it wasn't.

Blaise Zabini was sorted into Slytherin and the sorting was finally drawn to a close. Dumbledore stood up, said a few seemingly random and nonsensical words, demonstrating how utterly senile he was, and then the tables were suddenly filled with food and the feast began.

Everyone quickly dug in and began filling their plates with food, but even with that ever present distraction, it only took a couple minutes before someone someone finally got up the nerve to say something stupid to Potter.

"Are you really Harry Potter?" Ron Weasley asked around a mouth full of gravy-covered sliced turkey.

Of  _course_  it was Weasley who would act the part of obnoxious fanboy first. How did Potter ever end up best mates with this socially inept moron?

"Merlin, Weasley, swallow your food before speaking. That's disgusting," Draco sneered, grimacing at the bits of food that had flown from Weasley's mouth and landed on the table in front of him.

"Who asked you?" Weasley spat, shooting Draco a scathing glare. "What are  _you_  doing here, anyway? Shouldn't you be over at the Slytherin table? Never heard of a  _Malfoy_  ending up anywhere but the snake pit."

"The hat put me  _here_ , so this is apparently where I should be," Draco drawled, trying to keep his face indifferent and not show to any of these people just how terribly unsettled he really was at the moment.

"Leave Draco alone," Harry said, scowling mildly at Weasley. "If he was sorted into Gryffindor then he belongs in Gryffindor, just like the rest of us."

Harry speaking drew Weasley's attention back to him and while he looked a bit stunned and confused by the fact that Harry was defending Draco, his expression was quickly wiped away with awe and curiosity. "So are you really Harry Potter?"

Harry gave a slightly exasperated sigh and looked over at Draco. Draco gave him a sympathetic look in return because it was obvious that Potter could already tell that this whole celebrity thing was going to get very tiring, very quickly.

Refocusing on Weasley he nodded his head and spoke. "Yeah, that's right."

"And do you really have the, erm... the –" at this, Weasley's voice trailed off and he pointed at Harry's forehead.

"The scar?" Harry asked.

"Yeah," Weasley said, nodding his head quickly and looking relieved that Harry had said it first.

Harry shot another look over at Draco out of the corner of his eyes that secretly conveyed just how annoying he actually found this, but a moment later he was heaving a somewhat resigned sigh and lifting up the fringe on his forehead to bare the scar for all to see. The entire half of the table nearest them leaned in to look, and Harry quickly dropped his fringe in reaction.

"Alright you lot, this isn't a side-show. Enough gawking," Draco reprimanded them and quite a few at least had the decency to look cowed by his words.

Weasley wasn't one of them. He was on the opposite side of the table from them and did not apparently see any reason why  _he_  couldn't continue to gawk or ask inappropriate questions. He leaned further across the table and spoke in a quieter voice that, given the din of the room still needed to be fairly loud in order to be heard by Harry.

"So do you remember what happened? That night I mean?" Weasley asked, pointing towards Harry's scar again.

"You mean, do I remember the night my parents were brutally murdered in front of me?" Harry said in a sharp, curt tone that Draco was rather impressed by.

Weasley's face went almost as red as his hair and the look was ghastly on him. "I – I – er," he stuttered.

"Merlin's beard, I knew Ronnikins has always been a bit dense with the social graces –"

"–but even  _we_  didn't think you'd be be  _that_  insensitive."

"Please do forgive our little brother."

"We  _may_  have been responsible for him getting dropped on his head a time or two as an infant."

"Shut up!" Weasley exclaimed with a horrified whine as his two twin brothers spoke from two spots to Harry's right.

The nearest one reached over the Patil girl who sat between he and Harry and offered his hand to Harry. "Names George Weasley. I'm sorry to say, but I'm this gits older brother."

"And I'm Fred Weasley," the other one, one seat further still said, leaning forward and waving his hand in greeting.

Harry reached across the Patil girl and took George's hand in a quick shake. As he retreated his hand he said a quiet apology to the Patil girl for reaching across her like that and asked her name. She responded by saying her name was Parvati Patil. A few more introductions from those in the immediate vicinity were made after that.

Discussion flowed easily at the table during the meal. Harry asked Longbottom if he'd had any success in finding his toad and the boy had then beamed and nodded, saying that the first prefect they found had been able to summon the toad on the first try, and he was now securely lodged in his pet carrier with Longbottom's luggage.

No one else at the table was making any efforts to start conversation with Draco, but Harry clearly was making it a point to bring him in to any discussions others were trying to have with him. He also turned to Draco every time he had a question about something that someone else had said that he didn't know much about.

Draco had become accustomed by this point, to answering Harry's questions and didn't hesitate for a moment to explain anything asked of him. Seeing the opportunity for what it was, Granger, who was sitting on the opposite end of the table, two seats down from Weasley, began asking questions as well.

By the time the puddings had disappeared, he felt drained from the interrogation he felt he'd just endured. As eager as Harry had always been to learn as much as he could about the magical world he had suddenly found himself a part of, Granger was far  _far_  more intense.

One curious thing had taken place during the question and answer question that was his dinner. In the middle of taking a bit of something, Harry suddenly gasped and his hand flew up to his forehead and clasped over his scar. His eyes went to the head table and a questioning look graced his face.

"Hey, Draco?"

"Yeah Harry?"

"I don't suppose you know who that is sitting beside Professor Quirrell?"

Draco turned and looked up at the head table, wondering suddenly why Harry knew which one was Quirrell. His eyes landed upon the teacher in question for a moment before he turned back to Harry. "That's Severus... Professor Snape. My godfather. I told you about him."

" _That's_  him?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Oh, er... well, he was just sort of  _glaring_  at me, and it was like my... my  _scar_  just suddenly hurt. It was weird."

"What was Quirrell doing?"

"Huh?"

"When your scar hurt, what was Quirrell doing?"

"Oh, er... I don't know. I wasn't really looking at him. He had his head turned away from me."

Draco gave a slow, small nod, looking thoughtful.

"Why?" Harry asked in a quiet voice after a silent minute passed.

"I think... I think you should be careful about Quirrell," Draco whispered back.

"Why?" Harry asked, looking both confused, but also suddenly cautious. It was really incredible to Draco that Harry was so ready and willing to trust him. It was so drastically counter to his experience with Harry in his previous timeline that he was still adjusting to it.

"I can't say anything  _for sure_. Not yet anyway. But... well, let's just wait until our first defense class and see if what I heard sounds right. Just... be cautious around him, just to be safe, alright?"

Harry gave a determined nod. "Alright."

The whole evening had been exhausting and by the end of it, Draco felt utterly drained. Therefore, he was quite relieved when the plates all suddenly cleared of their contents, and the hall fell silent as the headmaster stood up and cleared his throat. The start of term speech he made was  _exactly_  as Draco remembered, right down to the warning about the third floor corridor being off limits.

 _Finally_  they were told to follow the prefects and were dismissed from the Great Hall. As Draco followed behind Percy Weasley with the other first-year Gryffindors he felt his heart heavy in his chest as he filled with dread. In his original timeline he had written hope that first night to proudly inform his parents about his sorting into Slytherin. He knew they would be expecting as much now too, but he was utterly  _dreading_  it.

After a few minutes of following behind the Weasley's prattish older brother through the Grand Staircase he found them led to the top of a staircase where they were faced with a very large portrait of a very large woman. Percy Weasley informed them that she was called the 'Fat Lady' and that she was the guardian to their common room. They were told the password and then led inside and then quickly shown around before being led up the stairs to the boys dorm.

Draco found himself a bit confused by the lack of any speech or interaction with their head of house. On his original first night Snape had come into the Slytherin common room and given them all a rather stern talking to before sending them off to bed. It appeared that McGonagall did not feel the need to do that with her Lions – although Draco thought it would probably have done the school quite a lot of good if she had.

He trudged up the stairs with his new dorm mates and the group of them settled into their new room. It was a stark contrast to the dungeons he was accustomed to. They were in one of the tallest towers now. There were six boys in Gryffindor this year now that Draco had meddled with time. Their dorm room was a large circular-shaped room with a wood-burning stove in the center and the six beds around it in a circle. Draco's bed was closest to the door on the left-hand side. Immediately after him was Harry, then Weasley's. As Draco went over to his pristine and brand-new top-of-the-line trunk, Weasley walked past him and gave him an angry glower before moving onto his own second-hand and rather ratty-looking trunk. Harry was blissfully oblivious of any of the tension and instead flopped himself down on the bed and bounced slightly with a look of absolute glee on his face.

Draco pulled out his stationary supplies and set them on the small wooden desk between his bed and his wardrobe and stared at a piece of parchment for a long minute before heaving a sigh and deciding to tackle it in the morning. He just could  _not_  bring himself to face his parents disappointment so soon.

Instead he went back to his trunk and began to pull out his clothing and put it into his wardrobe. Once he had enough dealt with for the time being, he changed into his bed clothes, made a quick trip to the loo, said goodnight to Harry and crawled into bed.


	3. Chapter 3

Severus Snape trudged up the stairs of the Grand Staircase, all the way up to the seventh floor and down the corridor towards the gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the headmaster's office.

He was clutching a crumpled up letter in his fist, but was as yet, still not entirely sure he would even bring it up. He knew he certainly didn't  _want_  to. It was hardly any concern of _his_ , but he supposed that he could at least pass the information off to Minerva and allow her to deal with it.

He spoke the password to the gargoyle and it quickly jumped aside. It was late and Severus was exhausted. He wanted this night to be over so he could retire to his quarters and his nice, comfortable bed, and maybe indulge in a brandy before allowing sleep to capture him. He was  _dreading_  tomorrow morning, but when had he  _not_  dreaded the first day of classes?

He knew he was going to be the last one arriving to this little meeting. He, unlike some of his colleagues, actually felt it important to  _speak_  with his new first years after the end of the feast and before sending them off to bed. He also had the greatest distance to travel – having to make his way all the way up from the dungeons where the Slytherin common room and dormitories were held, and then all the way up to the seventh floor.

So, needless to say, he was not in the best of moods when he finally got to the top of the rotating spiral staircase and entered the headmaster's office.

As he had expected, Pamona, Filius, Minerva, and Albus were already there, all seated in overly plush armchairs – except for Minerva who had obviously conjured her own hard, stiff-backed chair, just to her liking.

"Ah, Severus! How good of you to join us," Albus said, smiling warmly and making a motion with his hand towards the one remaining plush wing-backed chair. Severus strode over confidently and sank down into the chair, trying not to make it too obvious how relieved he was to finally be sitting down. "We've just begun discussing this years newly sorted first years."

Of course they had. Why wait for Severus? After all, he was merely doing  _his job_ , and therefore taking a bit longer to arrive than his counterparts who failed to hold the same high standards of their own performance.

"Yes, I was just telling Minerva how surprised I was that young Ms. MacDougal was sorted into my house," Filius gushed. "As I recall, both of her parents and her aunt were in  _your_ house."

Severus made a noncommittal humming sound from his throat, but didn't really care one way or the other. He would have his hands full this year with Nott, Crabbe, Goyle, and Parkinson all in his first year class. Of course, he had fully expected his godson to be in that list, and  _still_  didn't know what to make of –

"Yes, Ms. MacDougal is a bit of a surprise, but not nearly so much as young Mr. Malfoy!" Pamona said in an excited rush. "A Malfoy in Gryffindor! Merlin, Minerva, how  _will_  you handle it?"

"Well, if the hat put him in my house, then he must belong there," Minerva said in clipped tones and pressing her lips into a thin line.

"I suppose so – " Pamona replied mildly before turning to Severus. "The boy is your godson, isn't he? Do you know him well, Severus?"

"I certainly thought I did," Severus muttered under his breath.

"Surprised by the sorting, then?" Pamona asked with a knowing little grin that made Severus want to sneer at her, but he managed to at least partially refrain.

"So you  _were_  expecting the boy to be in your house?" Filius asked, leaning forward on his chair slightly with piqued interest.

"Of course, I was," Severus snapped shortly, feeling entirely too tired and irritated to deal with this meeting. "Draco has always been Lucius' son, through and through. His whole life, his primary goal has been to emulate his father and make the man proud. He's been horribly spoiled and pampered, and yet has also managed to be cunning when necessary. The hat shouldn't have spent more then a fraction of a second on his head before calling out Slytherin." Severus paused and sighed heavily. He did not envy Draco. He couldn't even begin to imagine how Lucius would react to this. "I cannot even fathom how this happened, however I am presently inclined to blame this unexpected turn of events on Harry Potter."

"Potter?" Minerva exclaimed with a slightly incredulous laugh to her voice. "How absurd! How could you possibly blame Lucius Malfoy's son getting sorted into Gryffindor on Harry Potter!?"

Severus grimaced and fished out the crumpled letter from his pocket. "This is a letter that I received from Narcissa Malfoy a few days ago. Apparently at the end of July, while shopping for Draco's school supplies in Diagon Alley, Draco and Mr. Potter met in Madam Malkin's and..." Severus' grimace deepened and twisted into a sneer, "struck up a  _friendship_ of sorts. They began to exchange daily letters after that."

Minerva frowned slightly and glanced over at the headmaster, who had remained all but silent since Severus had taken his seat.

"Mrs. Malfoy wrote you just to inform you that her son had been exchanging letters with Mr. Potter?" Filius asked curiously.

"Not exactly," Severus replied curtly. "She wrote me because some of the things that Draco told her that Potter had told  _him_  caused her some level of concern."

"Concern? In what way?" Minerva asked, taking on a very strict business tone.

Severus heaved an annoyed sigh and flattened the letter out on his lap. "She said that some of what Potter had said to Draco, and that Draco had then repeated to Narcissa, suggested that Potter has been...  _abused_  by his relatives. She believes that they have taken to beating the boy whenever any incidences of accidental magic occurred," Severus drawled in a bored tone. Minerva and Pamona both gasped, but he ignored them and pressed on. "No doubt as an attempt to reduce the frequency of the incidences and thus, the abuse, Potter's outbursts of accidental magic occurred less and less frequently in recent years, however they became more and more substantial in power and damage. This is generally considered a sign of subconscious magic suppression and she wanted to inform me so that we could take appropriate action to make sure it doesn't impede his ability to access and control his magic as he ages."

Severus finished and then leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest and looking entirely put upon for having had to relay such a message. He watched as Minerva's expression went from horrified to pure unadulterated fury as she turned and glared at Dumbledore with the fires of Hades burning in her eyes.

The old man himself was looking far older than Severus had ever seen him look. The twinkle was completely absent from his eyes and his bushy white eyebrows were drawn together, creasing his forehead deeply with worry.

"You  _said_  that he was safe!" Minerva hissed, reminding Severus somewhat of her cat animagus form. "You said you had someone watching the boy! That the only place he would be safe was with those awful people!" she ended, her voice raising in pitch at the end.

"No doubt the boy was just exaggerating," Severus drawled and examined his fingernails with boredom. "Boys this age are always looking for some way to impress or gain sympathy from their peers. The boy was probably whining because he was caught causing trouble and got a wallop to his rear and considered it  _unfair_  that he have to pay for his misbehavior."

"I would expect that  _you_  of all people, Severus Snape, would no better than to disregard the claims of a child in regards to abuse!" Minerva exclaimed angrily. "Especially the suggestion of his magic being suppressed in response to said abuse. As I recall, you came to Hogwarts under much the same ill circumstances!"

"Somehow I seriously doubt that Perfect-Harry-Potter ever had to endure anything even remotely resembling Tobais Snape," Severus spat. "And I hardly see how ancient history is even remotely relevant here."

"Oh, I wouldn't be quite so sure," Minerva said haughtily, turning back to Dumbledore to once again glare. "Those people were the worst sort muggles I'd ever seen and  _I warned you,_  Albus! I  _warned you!_  And you  _said_  that the matter was in hand! If I learn that, that boy has been there, all these years, being  _abused_  by those monstrous muggles –"

"Now, now, Minerva. Please, calm yourself," Dumbledore said, raising both his hands in a placating motion, while still looking rather painfully shaken himself.

"You said you had someone watching the boy, yes?"

"That is correct. I enlisted the aid of Arabella Figg. She moved into a house a street down from Harry Potter's family and offered her services to them early on as a free source of childcare. They enlisted her services on a fairly regular occasion. While she didn't believe that young Harry was as loved by his aunt and uncle as their own son perhaps was, she certainly never saw any signs of physical abuse."

" _Not as loved?_ " Minerva repeated incredulously. "What exactly did she say about their treatment?"

Dumbledore heaved a heavy sigh and steepled his hands upon his desk. "You must realize, Minerva, that staying with his aunt and uncle was the only truly safe place for Harry. It was the only place where we could guarantee that Voldemort's forces would never be able to gain access to him and where he could grow up away from the attention from his fame he would have encountered had he grown up aware of the magical world. Keeping him safe was of the utmost importance."

"What – did – she – say?" Minerva asked in harsh, clipped, tones.

Severus watched with a mildly disinterested expression as the two went on to argue for the next twenty minutes about their precious Harry Potter and his theoretical mistreatment at the hands of his muggle relatives.

Initially Severus disregarded the whole thing as irrelevant and nothing more than a waste of his precious time. He  _could_  be sleeping, or if nothing else, finalizing preparations for his classes in the morning. But he had to admit that his curiosity  _was_  mildly piqued after a while. He found himself rather shocked to learn that, as far as Dumbledore knew, Potter's muggle relatives had not informed him of his history at all. In fact, they had even tried to deny him his Hogwarts letter and it had ended up being Hagrid's duty to retrieve the boy and then inform him about how his parents had died at the hands of the Dark Lord.

 _Hagrid!_  How ludicrous?

Still, everything revealed was nothing more than hearsay and conjecture and he wasn't going to put a lot of stock into it until he saw the boy for himself in class. No doubt the brat had somehow contaminated Draco with all sorts of ridiculous ideas. Either that, or Lucius had instructed Draco to take every opportunity he could to get closer to Potter for some underhanded reason and Draco had somehow taken it much further than he should have, and  _that_  was why Draco had ended up in Gryffindor. Still... the hat could only be persuaded to a certain point, and it would never accept an underhanded motive for being sorted to an alternate house than it's ideal suggestion.

Severus really didn't know what to think about the whole convoluted mess. It was still entirely bewildering, and he wasn't yet sure how he was going to approach the situation. Heaven forbid he actually have to  _give_  points to Gryffindor. And yet, no matter what inexplicable set of events had transpired to result in this outcome, Severus still  _liked_  Draco. He was honestly quite fond of his godson, and  _knew_  the boy would be good with his potions work seeing as how he had given the child private lessons every summer for the last three years.

The meeting seemed to go on forever, and in the end, it was clear that Minerva was not yet finished with Dumbledore, but that they would be continuing their discussion at a later date, and in a more private setting where Minerva would feel free to yell at the old man all she wanted. In the end, it was decided that they would all watch Potter for signs of above-average difficulty calling forth and controlling his magic, and if it turned out to be the case, he would receive some extra lessons to make up for the damage caused by subconscious suppression of his magic.

It was far from unheard of to be given special lessons of this sort – in fact, Severus had endured them himself back in his first year at Hogwarts. His suppressed magic was one of the reasons he'd gotten into the Dark Arts so early on. His own internal magic had been so tightly bound it was difficult for him to readily access it, but Dark magic worked by absorbing magic energy from external sources and converting it into an energy that you could use to your own whims. His poor performance at many more traditional branches of magic had been one of the things that Potter's father had latched onto when he targeted Severus with his bullying tendencies. Falling back onto the Dark arts to defend himself had been Severus' only real option until the lessons began to pay off and he finally learned to draw his magic out with controlled precision.

The idea of Potter's brat-spawn requiring the same lessons was equal parts amusing as it was disconcerting.

Severus had, often times over the years, assigned these extra lessons to those members of his own house that he managed to identify had suffered under some form of abuse at home. Abused children almost always had more difficulty with their magical control than their peers, and Slytherin house always seemed to get an unfortunately large portion of the abused children that came to Hogwarts. Pamona had the second largest number of students sent to these special lessons, since she tended to get all of the muggleborn who had suffered under fear, confusion, and prejudice from their muggle family.

Finally, Severus simply pushed the whole matter out of his mind. He was tired and needed his rest. He would wait and watch. There really was nothing else he could do at this point.

– –

The quiet yet persistent and irritating, chirp of his alarm spell woke Draco early the following morning. He sat up in bed groggily and blinked owlishly for all of one second before he squinted and cringed against the onslaught of garish reds and gold. It took several seconds longer for his foggy brain to recall the horrifying events of the previous evening clearly enough to figure out why he was where he was. Then he groaned in misery and buried his face in his pillow, taking several long minutes to wallow in self pity and utter misery.

How the hell had he screwed this up, so badly?

How was he supposed to save his family from the Dark Lord if his family disowned him?

Draco finally sat up with a determined expression gracing his sharp but youthful features and pulled himself out from behind the nearly-obscene red hangings. He'd set his alarm unusually early, just so that he would have time in the morning to think and scheme and he wasn't going to miss out on the opportunity he'd given himself. He made a quick run to the bathroom and took one of the quickest showers he'd ever had before running back into his new dorm room. He made sure to be quiet since the other boys were all still asleep, and once he'd sat himself down at his desk, he pulled out his wand and cast a simple sound ward around his immediate work area.

He decided to try and take stock of what all he needed to attend to, first. He still had the little black journal that had once belonged to the Dark Lord. The only real plan he had in regards to it was that he somehow needed to get it to Dumbledore with a note – ideally anonymous – that noted it was something of import to the Dark Lord and it probably needed to be destroyed.

He needed to find a way to tell his parents about his unfortunate sorting that would prevent his father from outright disowning him. Perhaps he could try and spin it as some sort of ingenious scheme? Making himself a snake in the lion's den? Would his father believe that he could have  _intentionally_  gotten himself sorted into Gryffindor? Would his father even believe such a thing was possible? From Draco's own experience, the Hat was not one to be easily persuaded to put you where it didn't agree you belonged. He still couldn't believe the damned blasted thing had sent him to Gryffindor. Stupid bloody hat. He was hardly Gryffindor material, he had no idea what the thing was thinking. It really didn't get much more Slytherin than him. Sure, part of his motive for going through all of this time-travel insanity was to save his family from a madman, but the largest motivation was self-preservation. Preservation of his own life as well as his families, and their family name and honor.

It had become blatantly obvious that his family was doomed, had they continued along their current path, and Draco had seen no other paths to take.

Gryffindors were about courage and bravado and doing  _what's right_  and what's  _just_  and all that nonsense. In  _what way_  did any of that fit Draco? It didn't! That ridiculous hat was utterly barmy!

Draco did have to admit that there was  _one_  task that him being in Gryffindor might make a little easier, though.

Wormtail.

He glanced across Harry's bed to the side where Ron Weasley's bed lay closed off with the garish red hangings, and wondered if he'd be able to snatch Weasley's rat without anyone noticing, or if he should wait. It was still ridiculous and no small amount of disturbing to think that Weasley had carried around an animagus as a pet for three whole years before the disgusting man had been found out. And hadn't one of Weasley's brother's had the thing before that? How thick could you be? Rats don't live for a decade. You'd think that their parents would have at least had the brains to become suspicious when the thing hadn't died by now.

In any case, being Weasley's room mate was a legitimate curse, but at least it gave Draco easy access to Weasley's rat. The question was... what was he going to do about the man?

Merlin save him, because he just didn't know the answers... not to  _any_  of his questions. He felt so horribly overwhelmed. He felt utterly alone in a way he hadn't expected to feel. He had somehow convinced himself that once he was down in Slytherin house he could just move forward along the same general path he had traveled before, but not being such a prat and trying to maintain a friendship with Harry.

Now he realized how naive a plan that had been. Even if he'd gone to Slytherin like he'd expected, it wouldn't have really made a difference. The simple reality of the situation was that he had no plan and if he didn't come up with one, he wasn't going to get anything accomplished. But how the heck was he supposed to do that? He just didn't know. He didn't know.

Draco sighed dramatically and pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill and began to pen a letter to his father. He quickly scrunched it up into a ball and  _incendio'd_  it before starting fresh with a letter to his  _mother_. But that one wasn't turning out any better. He found himself wishing he could tell her the truth but knew that would explode violently in his face, and that it was a very, very  _bad_  idea. He couldn't confide the truth to either of his parents. His mother would tell his father, and his father would want to use Draco's knowledge of the future to try and make the Dark Lord's return more smooth and keep their family in his good graces. He wouldn't take Draco's warnings seriously, and Draco knew that.

No, if he was going to save his family, he would likely have to do it, dragging them, kicking and screaming the whole way. He could never tell them the truth – at least, not until the Dark Lord was long gone for good.

But the desire – no the  _need_  – to have someone to confide in and help him was still there, pressing against him.

Who could he tell? Who could he trust?

Severus was out. Draco had never been entirely sure of his godfather's loyalties and wasn't about to take any chances by trusting the man with something as important and delicate as this. He considered Dumbledore, but the idea made him want to wretch. Telling Dumbledore would be a last resort.

Was there no one that Draco could trust?

Then the idea came to him. Harry. He could trust Harry. But would Harry forgive him for this deceit so far? He grinned and laughed wearily to himself. Yes. Harry would. He was fairly sure of that. Harry was one of those insanely forgiving types somehow. Look at all the times Weasley had turned on him and yet Harry had always taken him back.

Draco couldn't help but wonder if he were absolutely out of his mind for considering telling Harry the truth, but he knew that if he was ever going to do it, he'd be best doing it early. The longer the deception went on, the harder time Harry would have forgiving him for not telling him the truth. Harry had had people lying to him his whole life and Draco didn't want to be one more person who just lied and used Harry. He'd come to like the boy too much for that. It felt,  _wrong_  to continue to deceive his friend.

Merlin, when did he become such a Hufflepuff? No... a  _Gryffindor_. All honesty and trust and right and wrong... Bloody hell! Stupid effing hat!

– –

Harry stretched languorously in the glorious comfort of his new bed for several minutes, only partially awake and thus, only vaguely aware of the rest of the world's existence outside of his heavy, comfortably warm body. His foggy mind cleared enough for him to become consciously aware of  _why_  he was so warm and comfortable – he was at Hogwarts – and this thought brought his awareness to full clarity as he realized that he had classes today!

He sat up, blinking owlishly at the heavy hangings around his bed before pulling them back and climbing out of bed. His panic over potentially being late on his first day subsided considerably as he realized that Weasley, in the bed beside his, was still sound asleep and snoring, and the boy, Neville, who had lost a toad on the train, was only just now digging through his trunk for clothes.

Harry turned to look towards Draco's bed and found it neatly made and his blond friend sitting at his desk already dressed and ready for the day, and frowning deeply at the parchment beneath his hand. A small pile of charred and crumpled balls of parchment littered the corner of his desk and the floor below.

Harry yawned, stretched, and padded his way over to stand behind Draco. "Morning," he said and the blond jumped suddenly before flushing slightly and looking embarrassed.

"Good morning, Harry," Draco said in that rather proper tone he sometimes took on when trying to cover up that he could be normal just like everyone else. Harry grinned. "You'd best be getting ready soon," Draco said then. "I imagine when Finnigan, Thomas, and Weasley wake up, they're going to be fighting over the showers in quite a rush. We'll need to be getting down to the Great Hall soon to get our timetables from McGonagall."

Harry nodded and scratched his side absently. "Yeah, I s'pose you've got a point. What'cha working on, anyway?"

Draco sighed heavily and let his quill drop from his hand and settle on the desk.

"I'm trying to write a letter to my parents," he grumbled and Harry couldn't help but frown in concern at how glum his friend looked.

"Do you really think they'll take it that bad? You being sorted into Gryffindor, I mean?" Harry asked quietly.

Draco glanced up at him over his shoulder and gave a defeated little shrug. "It really depends on how I phrase it, but I'm having trouble lying to them... which is utterly obscene, honestly."

"Huh?" Harry said, trying to make sense of that sentence. Draco chuckled weakly before letting out a long, slow sigh and pushing his chair away from his desk and standing up. Draco motioned Harry over to the other side of his bed that was about as far away from everyone else in the room as you could get.

"Harry..." Draco began hesitantly, glancing around the room to make sure Neville was sufficiently preoccupied and their other roommates were still asleep. "I have something I need to tell you. It's... it's really important."

Harry nodded feeling both eager and anxious. "Alright, what is it?"

"Er... not here. It'll take a while to explain everything and we just don't have the time right now. But it really is important."

"Okay. So when do you want to do this?"

"Er... probably after classes today will be the first real opportunity we have to discuss it. I suppose it'll depend on what our timetables look like. If we have a free period after lunch, we could just skip lunch to talk but then we'd miss lunch."

Harry grimaced and Draco chuckled weakly.

"It's okay Draco – if it's really important, I'll miss lunch," Harry said with a determined nod that made Draco's face soften and his eyes dart to the floor.

"It's important... but it can wait till later. After our last class. We'll have two and a half hours between the end of the last block and the start of dinner."

Harry nodded his agreement and Draco reminded him that he should go get ready so they could make it to breakfast early enough to get the best selection.

Fifteen minutes later Harry was trailing behind Draco and amazed at his friend's ability to not get lost in this crazy, wonderful, magical labyrinth of moving staircases and endless arrays of hallways that looked similar enough that Harry honestly had no idea where he was. After Harry made a comment on his wonder towards that very subject, Draco had suddenly looked nervous and shuffled his feet a bit, refusing to meet Harry's gaze before muttering something about their talk later and quickly pressing on.

As they entered the Great Hall it appeared for a moment that Draco was about to walk to the Slytherin table before he came to a sudden halt, closed his eyes and grumbled something under his breath, turning and going to the Gryffindor table instead.

Harry decided not to comment on it since it was obvious his friend was still having trouble coming to terms with his sorting. Harry did glance over at the Slytherin table and waved at Pansy and Theo who looked between each other for a moment before hesitantly waving back at Harry. Harry and Draco reached the Gryffindor table and sat down. Draco still seemed deeply distracted but Harry's attention was instantly drawn to the buffet of delicious-looking breakfast foods spread out before him. He had thought the quantity of food for the feast last night had probably had something to do with the fact that it was a  _feast_ , but given the sheer volume presented before him now, he almost wondered if this was actually  _normal_.

He grinned widely, glorifying in the knowledge that he could eat as much as he damn well pleased and that he wouldn't have to cook food for the muggles again for... well, at least as long as he was at Hogwarts. Hopefully, he'd never have to cook for them again, ever, but he had no idea what his alternatives might be so he wouldn't get his hopes up prematurely.

Harry quickly began to load up his plate and eat, humming in pleasure at how wonderful everything tasted. His obvious enjoyment of his meal apparently drew in Draco's attention and he slowly began to emerge from his funk and started loading up a plate of his own.

It wasn't too much longer before McGonagall appeared and started handing out schedules to those that were already present in the Great Hall. Harry and Draco's schedules were identical, and Draco explained that they'd have the same classes as all of the other first year Gryffindors until third year, when they'd be able to chose from a set of electives.

They looked over their timetables together and Draco went over what Harry could expect from each class, which Harry was extremely grateful for. For Mondays, they had Potions first, then Defense, then lunch. After lunch they had Herbology and then History and then the two and a half hour break until dinner. Four classes a day didn't seem like it should make a full schedule to Harry, but Draco explained that each class was an hour and a half long, and the double classes were two whole hours long, so he figured that would fill the days a bit better.

Neville managed to get down to the Great Hall about twenty minutes after they did, although he had apparently left just after they had, but had gotten lost along the way. It was only fifteen minutes until their first class would be starting when their other three room mates rushed into the hall and raced through their breakfasts. Draco had smirked subtly at them and snickered when Weasley nearly choked on a sausage.

Harry actually asked them all their names again, since he hadn't managed to memorize them all the night before. He new the red-head was 'Weasley', but only because he'd managed to remember that his twin brothers were Fred and George Weasley. The boy extended his hand and said his name, but it came out more as 'Won' because his mouth was stuffed with hash at the time he spoke.

Draco made a disgusted noise and once again reminded the red-head to  _please_ swallow before speaking around him, which made the boy scowl angrily and go nearly as red as his hair. The other two boys introduced themselves as Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas.

Seamus said he was a half-blood and explained that his mum was a witch, but his dad was a muggle. Dean was muggleborn; or at least, he assumed as much. The truth was that he'd never known his dad, and Draco pointed out that it was entirely possible that his father could have been a wizard and his mum had simply never known before the man went and disappeared. Draco also noted that the time when Dean's dad went missing, late 1980,  _was_  during the height of the wizarding war and a  _lot_  of witches and wizards died during that year.

This gave the dark-skinned boy pause with a thoughtful expression. Before they could take the conversation any further, however, it was time to leave and the group of them, along with the first year girls who had still been at the Gryffindor table, began the trek out of the Great Hall and to the dungeons.

The door to the Potions lab was closed when they got there and the Slytherin students were already standing in a few close groups talking quietly. Harry glanced over at Draco and saw his blond friend eyeing the groups with longing in his eyes and a sadness that made something in his chest ache. He hated the thought that Draco was unhappy with the sorting, and was that much more thankful that he'd convinced the hat to send him to Gryffindor, so he could stay with his friend. He could only imagine how much harder this would be for Draco if Harry had gone to Slytherin without him.

Harry saw Theo talking with a dark-skinned boy who he remembered having been last at the sorting because his name started with a 'Z', and standing beside them, but not seeming to actually contribute to the conversation were Greg and Vincent. He glanced back at the Gryffindors and Ron seemed to be involved in a conversation with Dean and Seamus, recounting whispered stories about the Potions professor that his older brothers had told him. Coming to a decision, Harry grabbed Draco's arm by the wrist and dragged him over to the Slytherins.

"Wha–" Draco said in surprise, but cut himself off just as quickly.

"Hey Theo," Harry said brightly, nodding at the blond, stringy boy. "Hey Vincent; Greg," he continued, nodding at each.

"Hey Harry; hey Draco," Theo replied easily although he did look a little surprised. The dark-skinned boy looked  _very_ surprised, but seemed to quickly hide it. Crabbe and Goyle just grunted and shot hesitant smiles at Draco. "This is Blaise Zabini," Theo continued, jerking his head to his other companion.

Blaise offered his hand out and Harry easily took it, smiling.

"So how do you lot know each other?" Blaise asked, looking at Theo questioningly.

"Draco introduced us on the train," Theo responded.

At this, Blaise looked over and raised a single questioning eyebrow in Draco's direction. "Draco did?"

"Harry and I met in Diagon Alley at the end of July," Draco replied smoothly, using that slightly haughty tone, he sometimes adopted. "We exchanged letters during the month of August and met up for the journey to Hogwarts."

"Is that so?" Blaise responded with concealed interest.

At that moment the door to the classroom burst open and a frightfully dour man clad entirely in black, stood there, staring down his nose at them all imperiously with a look of obvious disdain gracing his sallow features.

"Inside," he said in a quiet hiss before turning on his heal, robes billowing around his legs, and stalked back into the classroom.

The students quickly filed into the room, Harry and Draco sitting in a desk in the front row, third work-bench from the right, putting them almost dead-center. Harry wasn't sure he really wanted to be front and center with a man as intimidating as this professor appeared, but Draco had already sat down before he had a chance to say anything so he sat down with him.

Blaise and Theo sat at the bench to the left, and the rest of the Slytherins filled up that side of the room while the Gryffindors filled up the right side. No sooner had the castles bells finished ringing, when the professor waved his wand and the door swung shut with a clicking sound that, while not honestly all that loud, echoed loudly in the deathly silent room.

The professor introduced himself as Professor Snape, which Harry had already known since Draco had spoken of the man so often in his letters over the previous month. It was difficult, however, to connect this intimidating man with the godfather that Draco had described with such affection. Not that Draco hadn't warned Harry that Snape could be a frightening personality, but  _still..._  this was a bit beyond even what Harry had imagined.

Snape set into what was probably a practiced speech, starting with a warning about no 'foolish wand waving' and concluded with noting that his usual students were little more than worthless dunderheads. He had managed this entire speech in a near-whisper that demanded absolute attention, and managed to come off as more intimidating than Harry's uncle had ever been, even when he bellowed hist most angry and loudest.

Harry had to admit that this man could, at the very least, command a classroom.

Professor Snape then proceeded to take role, pausing at Harry's name and sneering out a comment about him being a celebrity that set Harry to scowling indignantly. It was only the gentle touch of Draco's hand on his forearm that pulled Harry out of his dark mood long enough to notice that Snape had started in on a lecture of some sort.

Almost without any warning at all, Snape suddenly called on Harry, asking him about mixing powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood.

Harry's mind seemed to sputter to a halt in his panicked shock at having been called upon so unexpectedly. He probably would have continued to gape openly if not for the fact that Draco kicked him in the shin and jerked him back to reality.

Harry replayed the question in his mind and realized with some surprise that he actually knew the answer. Or at least, he was vaguely sure he knew it.

"Er, is it the Draught of Living Death, sir?" Harry replied hesitantly.

Snape looked ready to sneer and say something sharp and nasty, but came to a halt with a look of surprise for a brief moment before he simply shifted to looking annoyed.

"Correct," Snape said, shortly, with an especially sour expression on his face. "Mr. Malfoy, can you tell me what the antidote to the swelling solution is?"

"The deflating draught, sir." Malfoy replied confidently.

"Correct," Snape said with a slight up-turn of the corner of his mouth – a distinctly different expression than the one he'd worn a moment prior when he'd said the same thing to Harry. "Mister...  _Weasley_ , I can assume. Name one potion armadillo bile is used in."

Harry turned his head to look over his shoulder and saw Ron sitting there with an utterly horrified expression on his face. At the worktable beside his, the bushy-haired Granger girl had her arm extended eagerly into the air and was waving around rather manically.

"Well, Weasley?"

"I... I don't know," Ron mumbled, ducking his head and looking flushed with embarrassment.

"What's that?"

"I don't know," Ron said a bit louder and looking extremely put out for having to repeat himself.

"Couldn't be bothered to pick up and read even the first chapter of your text book? Seeing as how you've had five brothers who have already taken my class before you, I would think you would have had plenty of opportunity to at least  _glance_  at the book," Snape drawled condescendingly. "Can anyone  _else_  answer the question?" Snape said looking around blandly.

Granger's hand continued to wave in the air, with mad eagerness, but Snape seemed determined to ignore her for some reason. The first hand that went up on the Slytherin side belonged to Blaise and Snape instantly called out 'Yes, Mr. Zabini?'

"The wit-sharpening potion is one," Blaise said.

"Correct, Mr. Zabini. Five points to Slytherin."

The class continued along in a similarly miserable vein, although they did eventually get to actually brewing a potion, which Harry found surprisingly interesting.

Snape seemed to completely ignore he and Draco during the brewing, except for one instance when he stood beside Draco and made a noise of vague approval in his throat before continuing on down the row, belittling every pair of students on the Gryffindor side, as he went.

Harry was deeply relieved when the class was finally over, and eagerly followed Draco to Defense.

That class, however, wasn't much better. Professor Quirrell wasn't the least bit intimidating, but his constant stuttering made it difficult to follow along with what he was saying, not to mention how distracting the unpleasant odor of garlic that pervaded the general classroom was. If that wasn't bad enough, by the time class was out, Harry had a rather unpleasant headache that seemed oddly centered around his scar.

Draco caught him rubbing at it and grimacing slightly and was instantly concerned. He even suggested a visit to the Hospital wing, but Harry almost instantly shrugged off his worries. It was just a headache, after all.

Quirrell had assigned a reading for the first class, but Harry had already read the chapter assigned, back during early August. After eating lunch, he and Draco sat at the Gryffindor table skimming the chapter again and discussing it. It was obvious to Harry that Draco considered it all exceedingly simple and Harry was torn between being grateful that he had someone to help him understand it all, and feeling rather inadequate and behind on everything, due to his unfortunate time secreted away with the muggles.

Ron had, at one point, appeared to make an effort to work his way into their conversation, but when it became horribly obvious that they were talking about classwork, he had huffed slightly and scooted back down the bench to talk with Dean and Seamus some more.

After lunch was Herbology and while Harry felt vaguely comfortable with the subject since he had no small amount of experience digging around in the dirt with plants, he didn't really feel all that enthused by the subject. The  _next_  class was probably the worst one so far; and not because the teacher was scary or stuttered, but because he was  _dead_. History of Magic was taught by a ruddy  _ghost_  and the man had to be the most dull and horrifyingly boring person to walk the earth,  _dead or alive._

Harry was exceedingly glad when the days classes were over, and eagerly followed a now distinctly nervous Draco through the castle, up a ridiculous number of stairs, and down a corridor that he was fairly sure was on the seventh floor, but he couldn't really be sure at this point, he was so easily turned around.

He had to marvel at the fact that Draco seemed to know his way around the castle as if he'd been there for ages, despite this being their first day. Finally Draco came to a stop in front of a blank stretch of bare brick wall and began to pace back and forth in front of it. On his third pass a door appeared out of nowhere.

"Whoa!" Harry exclaimed. "How'd you know to do that?"

Draco appeared to pull his lower lip between his teeth and his forehead was creased with worry lines. "I'll um... explain in a bit. Come on," he said, jerking his head towards the door before pulling it open and stepping inside.

Harry followed behind him and found himself entering a simple, comfortable-looking sitting room, not all that unlike the Gryffindor common room, but with lower ceilings and foggy green frosted windows. Draco walked over to one of the gray velvet chairs in front of a large fireplace and sat down with a sigh, holding his eyes closed for several long seconds while the worry lines in his forehead continued despite his apparent relaxed position.

Harry sat down in the chair directly opposite Draco and watched with anxious caution. Draco had been on edge all day long; often appearing to drift off into his own world of secret worries, and Harry wished he had some idea as to what to do to help sooth his friends worries.

Finally Draco let out a long, slow breath, before opening his eyes and sitting up on the edge of his chair.

He propped his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands in front of him, resting his chin atop his knuckles and looking at Harry with hesitant concern.

"Before I start, I need your word that you won't repeat any of this to  _anyone_  else...  _ever._ " Draco said, still nervously gnawing on his lower lip.

Harry quickly nodded his head. "I promise."

"I'm serious, Harry," Draco said, and Harry could tell from the legitimate fear in the boy's silver-gray eyes that he  _really was_. Draco pulled in another calming breath before pressing on. "Okay... first off, I suppose I need to confess that I haven't been entirely honest with you over the last month. Although, in my defense, what I'm about to confess to you, would get me the Dementor's Kiss if anyone found out, so I couldn't exactly go saying it in any letters."

"Dementor's Kiss?" Harry said, frowning. "Aren't dementors the things that guard the wizard prison you mentioned?"

"That's right. When a Dementor 'Kisses' you, they suck out your soul. It technically leaves your body still alive, but your nothing more than a lifeless husk when they're done. It's tantamount to a death sentence, in the wizarding world."

"And what you've done would get you kissed?!" Harry gaped.

Draco swallowed and lowered his gaze as he nodded his head. "Yes. If the Ministry found out the truth, I'd instantly be given the Kiss."

"What'd you do?" Harry nearly exclaimed, unable to wrap his mind around what his friend could have possibly done to deserve something like that. "You didn't  _kill_  someone, did you?"

Draco quickly shook his head. "No – killing someone wouldn't get me the Kiss anyway. They just lock murderers up in Azkaban."

"Are you saying you did something  _worse_  than kill someone?" Harry choked.

Draco let out a weak, near-hysterical little laugh and shook his head, still resolutely looking at the floor between his feet. "The Ministry thinks so, I suppose. It's a matter of perspective really."

"Draco... what did you do?" Harry asked in a more serious, yet still quite cautious tone.

Draco sighed heavily and nodded his head, seemingly to himself. "I tampered with time."

"Tampered with time?" Harry echoed in confusion.

"I used a ritual to send my mind, memories, and magic, back in time, into the body of my younger self," Draco clarified.

"Wait... so you traveled back in time?"

"Yes, basically. But physical mass the size of a person can't really travel back in time further than a day, so it wasn't possible to send my whole body back, just my mind, memories and magic. In order for it to work, I had to send myself back in time, and into my own, younger body."

"So... so you're not really eleven?"

Draco shook his head, smiling sadly at Harry.

"How old were you? When you sent yourself back, that is."

"I was sixteen," Draco said."

"Wait, that's all? You're only five years older?" Harry said, sounding a bit surprised.

Draco snorted humorlessly. "Five years was plenty enough time for the world to practically fall apart around me. Honestly, if I'd waited even a month longer, I'm not sure I would have still been alive."

Harry's face suddenly become serious and he leaned forward in his seat.

"What happened?"

At first, Draco wasn't even sure where to start, but before he knew it, words were pouring from between his lips and he just couldn't stop. He told Harry what he knew about the Prophecy; which, admittedly wasn't much more then the fact that there was one, and that, supposedly, it said that Harry was the one destined to defeat Voldemort. He told Harry that was why Voldemort had come after him and his family when the green-eyed boy was just a baby, and why Voldemort would continue to come after Harry, time and time again, in the coming years.

He told Harry how at the end of their fourth year, Harry had been abducted, used in a ritual to fully restore the Dark Lord to full power, but that Harry had somehow managed to duel the Dark Lord and escape with his life in tact. He told Harry that his father had been a Death Eater during the first war and after the Dark Lord's return, his father had returned as a faithful servant and offered up his own home as a base of operations.

He told Harry about how awful and frightening it was to have the darkest and most deadly wizard there was, living in his family home. How horrifying it had been to have Azkaban escapees who had clearly lost their minds, living in his childhood home. He told Harry about how disillusioned he had quickly become, when faced with the reality of living in the midst of these people.

He detailed how, growing up, his father had often told him stories that glorified the Dark Lord as a genius, and as the most powerful and awesome wizard imaginable, and how he would bring back the strength of the old ideology and by serving him they would bring honor and power to the Malfoy name. He told Harry about how he had worshiped his father as a child and how he had believed his father could never possibly be wrong.

And yet, when brought face-to-face with the reality that was the Dark Lord, he realized just how stupid and naïve he had been. Perhaps, long ago, during the first war, the Dark Lord might have been a genius and worthy of Draco's father's undying respect and devotion, but the creature that he had turned into was little more than a monstrously insane madman, obsessed and demented. A bitter twisted creature that's only enjoyment in life was watching those around him suffer.

He told Harry about the first time he had seen his father crawl across the dirty stone floor of one of their lower chambers, in order to kiss the hem of Voldemort's robes. And then as he'd watched the Dark Lord raise his bare foot and step on his father's face and push it into the dirty floor while cackling madly as Lucius cowered and did nothing to stand up for his own pride.

He quietly whispered tails of the times he had suffered under the Dark Lord's  _Cruciatus_  curse, and how horrible the pain and the fear and the piteous self-loathing had felt. How dirty and disgusting he'd felt when his flesh had born the Dark Lord's mark. How it had seemed to itch underneath his skin,  _all the time_. The only time the itch had let up was when it was burning in pain instead. He spoke of how he'd often stood beneath the scalding water of the shower and scrubbed, mercilessly at the disfiguring mark, wishing upon all hope, that he could wash the awful thing away, even while knowing it was impossible.

Draco had his face buried in his hands, elbows propped up on his knees, and unwilling to meet Harry's eyes for fear of seeing the disgust or loathing that he had felt for himself in those piercing green eyes. The room was deathly silent for many long minutes while Draco simply tried to calm his breathing and Harry processed all that he had heard.

"I can't believe I dumped all that on you," Draco finally whispered. "I'm sorry, Harry... it wasn't right of me to drop all of this on you, out of the blue. You're only eleven... I..." his voice broke off and he just shook his head, not really knowing what to say.

"No... it's okay. I'm glad you told me," Harry said, although his voice sounded a bit hoarse. "So... so what was your plan then?"

Draco slowly raised his head and looked at Harry blankly. "Plan?"

"For making sure none of this stuff happens. I mean, that's why you came back in time, right?"

"I..." Draco began but frowned slightly and shook his head. "I really didn't have a plan," he admitted, chuckling pitifully. "It's rather pathetic, really. I just... I just wanted to make sure my family didn't end up in the same position they did before. I wanted to save them from... from  _him_. But I also hoped that I might be able to do  _something_  to help...  _you._ I'm not sure what could possibly be so special about you that would make you capable of defeating that monster... I can't imagine  _anyone_  being capable of such a feat, but supposedly you can." Draco paused to swallow and take a deep breath. "I don't know what I can do to help, but I want to do whatever I can. You fought him in our first year and somehow banished him enough that he wasn't able to come back again till our fourth.

"In second year, rumor was that you fought against a giant basilisk and survived. Third year you went up against a hundred dementors and survived. Fourth year you fought a dragon."

"You can't be serious?!" Harry exclaimed in disbelief. "Me? How could I... I mean, I'm just... I'm just  _Harry_. Aside from what you've helped me read up on over the last month, I don't know a single lick of magic. There's nothing fantastic or special about me. Certainly not enough to fight dragons and basilisks!"

Draco smiled softly at Harry and chuckled, shaking his head slightly. "But you are special," he said softly. "I hated it for ages, honestly... but it was mostly because I was jealous, and you'd turned down my offer of friendship."

"I did?" Harry said, looking bewildered and disbelieving.

Draco chuckled humorlessly. "I was a real stupid prat when I was actually eleven, Harry. Remember, I still worshiped the ground my father walked on. All I wanted was to try and be just like him," Draco sighed and shook his head sadly. "I was a pathetic arse. I was full of shite and you saw through me in an instant. Looking back, I certainly can't blame you for turning down my offer of friendship. I was a stupid, arrogant, little brat, and you were..." he sighed wistfully. "Well, just like you are now. But you became someone even greater with each bit of adversity you overcame. Stronger and braver..." Draco paused, looking thoughtful for a moment before a determined look grew on his features.

"If anyone can do it, I believe it's you," Draco said suddenly, looking up at Harry fiercely. "I want to help you Harry. I want to do things right this time. I'll admit that, originally, I came back to save my own hide, and to save my parents from that monster, but it's bigger than just me and mine. You got an awful deal the whole way through, with one ridiculous thing after another and little-to-no decent preparation. Honestly, the most impressive part is that you survived,  _despite_  all of the things that were constantly holding you back."

"Draco..." Harry said weakly, shaking his head and feeling seriously overwhelmed. "I really don't think I could possibly ever..." Harry trailed off as his mind called back up some of the horrific things Draco had described Voldemort doing to Draco's family; to  _Draco_  himself. At first, it had made it all that much more intimidating and frightening, but another part of him could only think of those stories and feel anger and disgust.

This was the man that had killed Harry's parents. The man that had tried to kill Harry, given him his scar, and who would, according to Draco, come back and try to kill him again and again.

And it was Harry's destiny to put an end to this monster, once and for all. It was prophecized that  _Harry_  was the one who was somehow supposed to be able to end Voldemort. If that were true... if it were true then he  _had_  to at least try, right? The future Draco had described was horrible, and it would become reality in five short years. That meant Harry only had so much time to prepare. To become this strong person that Draco had described with such passion and... dare he say,  _reverence._  It was seriously overwhelming, and quite a lot of pressure for someone whose life, just over a month prior, had consisted of trying his hardest not to be noticed and avoiding the physical violence of his bullying whale of a cousin.

It wasn't just the world that had suddenly gotten bigger and more incredible, to Harry – it was also what was expected of him. Not just all this boy-who-lived nonsense, where what he had supposedly done was in the past, but now there was something real and  _important_  that lay in his future, and if he failed to live up to those expectations, real people would suffer for it. Real people would die and be tortured.

Harry let a shuddering breath escape from between his parched lips and closed his eyes tightly in an attempt to reign in the storm of emotions in his head. It was just  _so much..._ Too much... but...

"Okay..." Harry whispered and Draco's head slowly rose so he could look at him again. "So... what do we do?" Harry asked, giving the other boy a weak grin.

A small, nearly hysterical laugh seemed to cough it's way out of Draco's chest and he ended it with a weary shrug. "I have no idea. I guess we just move forward as best as we can."

"I guess so..."

Draco made a frustrated sort of growl and bowed his head again.

"I wish I knew more about what happened to you during those years. Everything I do know was just hearsay and rumor, mixed in with some guessing and observation. I mean, I don't even know how you ended up in some sort of mess with Professor Quirrell at the end of first year, but I'm fairly positive that it had something to do with the Dark Lord."

"Professor Quirrell? Is that why you warned me about him at the feast?"

"That's right. I think... and mind you, I'm really not sure about this, but I  _think_  that he's being possessed by the Dark Lord. Or he's carrying him around or maybe he's got him secreted away in his office or quarters or something." Draco leaned back in his squashy chair and groaned. "I hate that I don't have enough useful information to feel like I'm really worth anything here. What's the point of going back in time if you don't even have the necessary information to make effective changes?! I can't believe I came back so unprepared. That damn hat was right, I have acted like a bloody Gryffindor. Impetuous and arrogant. I can't even keep a secret. Here less than three months and I'm already spilling my guts to you. No wonder it wouldn't put me in Slytherin."

He muttered and let his head fall back against the chair and closed his eyes, looking defeated.

Harry was quiet for a moment, not entirely sure how to respond right away. Finally he sat forward a bit and looked down at his hands, clasped in his lap. "Well... I'm glad you came. Even more glad that you're not keeping it secret from me."

Draco lifted his head slowly and looked at Harry with hesitant worry on his features.

"It's a lot to take in," Harry said slowly and let a small chuckle out before he sighed and shook his head. "A  _lot_  to take in. But... I think it's important that I know. I mean... before if I goofed off or didn't take my classes all that seriously, I'd really only be worried about how it would effect me, you know? But now I realize... I mean, I can't just waste time trying to have fun, can I? I need to um... get better, I guess. I need to be strong or else all that awful stuff you said, will happen again."

"Hold on... I mean, even  _I_ know that's not fair," Draco said suddenly, sitting up again. "I mean... you're only  _eleven_. It'd disgusting that everyone just...  _expected_  all of this from you –" Draco's voice trailed off and he groaned as he let his head fall into his hands. "Hell, look at me – hypocrite supreme. I came here hoping that if I befriended you, you would help to save me and my family. I'm such a monstrous arse."

"No, I'm still glad," Harry insisted quickly. "I needed to know this stuff. Besides, it gives me some sort of goal or motivation or whatever. You said that it was like one awful thing after another just happened to me, year and again, right? Well, maybe those things won't be nearly so awful if I just try harder. You've already helped me with loads of things, just through letters and lending me things to read.

"Maybe you don't know all the details that would be needed to prevent or be totally prepared for every little thing that's gonna happen, but that doesn't mean that I can't try to be better prepared just by trying harder, right?"

Draco slowly rose his head from his hands and looked at Harry with tired concern.

"And... and you'll be here with me, right?" Harry said giving Draco a weak little grin. "Having you to stick by my side and help me out... I'm sure that'll make a huge difference on it's own."

"I just hope it doesn't screw something up," Draco said glumly.

"How would it do that?"

Draco sighed and leaned back again. "Before... in my old timeline, you had different friends. I don't think that Weasley ever did anything actually worthwhile, but Granger probably did; I'm sure of that."

"Which one is Granger?" Harry said, frowning.

"The bushy-haired muggleborn girl who was helping Neville find his toad on the train. The one who looked like her hand was gonna shoot off her body all day in classes."

"Oh, her! Wait, really? I was friends with her?" Harry said twisting up his face a little. "She seemed kind of... um..."

"Bossy? An insufferable know-it-all? Yeah, that's Granger," Draco snorted and rolled his eyes. "I think you saved her from... oh! Oh I completely forgot about the troll!"

"Troll?"

"Yeah, Quirrell let a troll into the school on Halloween our first year. Merlin, I'd completely forgotten about that! Anyway, I think it was a distraction so he could try to do something... but you ended up saving Granger from that troll."

"I fought a  _troll?_  On Halloween? That's less than two months from now! I don't know how to fight a troll! Are you really sure about this?"

Draco chuckled and shrugged. "Pretty sure. I have no idea how you did it, but the next morning you'd gotten a mountain of points for Gryffindor for it. It actually put a bit of a dent in all the points you'd lost just because Severus hated you and took advantage of every chance he had to deduct points from you."

"What's up with that anyway?" Harry said indignantly, scowling. "Why does he hate me so much?"

"He went to school with your parents," Draco said dismissively. "You dad was a bit of a bully or something and he and his friends used to pick on Severus. Now he's the bully and he takes out his childhood misery on his rival's kid, or something. It's really immature, honesty."

"My dad was a bully?" Harry whispered, looking a bit devastated by the mere thought.

"Well... when he was a kid, yeah. That's what I heard anyway. But he apparently grew out of it and everyone says he was a really great man there at the end. He became an Auror and fought against the Dark Lord in the first war on three separate occasions and lived to fight again another day, so that, at least, speaks mountains about his skill."

Harry nodded his head, but was still frowning and looked rather deep in thought.

"Anyway," Draco said, sitting forward again and drawing Harry's attention back to him. "There are a few things I  _do_  know about that I know I need to deal with, but I'm just not entirely sure how to move forward on them. I suppose it's one of the reasons I decided I needed to confide in someone. I just... I don't know, I need someone to bounce ideas off of or something. And of course, there's the whole thing about me not really knowing all the details about things."

"Okay, so what are these things you need to deal with?" Harry asked.

"Ron Weasley's rat isn't really a rat," Draco started. He's actually an animagus. He's been hiding out in his animal form for the last ten years because he's actually a Death Eater that people believe are dead."

"His  _rat?!"_  Harry exclaimed. "Wait... a man can turn into a rat and stay that way for ten years?"

"Yeah, that's what an animagus is. A wizard who can turn into an animal. They only have one form, and not everyone can do it. Professor McGonagall is an animagus; she can turn into a cat."

"Oh, wow. So Weasley's pet rat is really a wizard... that's kind of... really really creepy."

"Yeah well... it gets worse," Draco said, grimacing.

"How could it get worse?"

"He's not just  _any_  Death Eater, he's the one that betrayed your parents to the Dark Lord and basically doomed them to die."

Harry felt something inside him freeze, and a knot form in the center of his chest. He didn't know what to feel; perhaps his mind had shut down as some sort of defense mechanism, not that he had the brain power to realize that.

Harry's face hardened and his lips thinned as he stared at a crack in the stone flooring for a few long seconds. "And he's living in our dorm room," he said coldly.

"That's right."

"And people think he's dead already?"

"Yeah... actually, he was awarded an Order of Merlin because people thought he was killed by the person who betrayed your parents – they didn't realize that  _he_  was the one who betrayed them, not the other guy. In fact..." Draco's voice trailed off and he frowned. "You know... okay, now I don't know all the details, but you know about your Godfather that i mentioned through our letters? Sirius Black? He was best friends with your dad and he was the one that was supposed to look after you, not those muggles."

"Right. The one you said never got a trial?"

"That's right. Black is the one who ended up in Azkaban on charges of killing Peter Pettigrew – the rat – and betraying your parents. The rat framed Black for his crimes, turned into his animagus form and ran. Black has been rotting away in Azkaban ever since for something he didn't even do. Now, I don't know  _how_  he managed it, but in our third year in my other timeline, Black escaped from Azkaban. I don't know exactly what happened to him after that, but apparently he ended up working against the Dark Lord because he was present at a battle two years later against a bunch of Death Eaters and... and my father. The only reason I really know is because my Aunt Bella – who the Dark Lord had broken out of Azkaban earlier that year – kept boasting about having been the one who killed him."

"Wait, okay so..." Harry started anxiously before pausing and frowning. "so, I have a godfather, who is in prison right now, but he didn't actually do it, Weasley's pet rat did it... does that mean if we catch the rat we can prove he was innocent and get him out?"

Draco shrugged. "I suppose so. No guarantees of course. It depends on who we get to help us, or who we turn the rat over to. I'm really not sure who to go to."

"What about Dumbledore?"

Draco grimaced. "I don't know... I definitely don't trust him, and on top of that, he'd want to know how we found the rat or figured out that Black was really innocent."

"But won't  _anyone_  we go to want to know that?" Harry asked skeptically.

"Well, yeah, okay, probably," Draco conceded reluctantly.

"We need to figure out what to do about Weasley's rat before anything else," Harry said with a determined nod.

"Even before we figure out if Quirrell is really being possessed by the Dark Lord?" Draco said incredulously.

"Can you honestly keep sleeping in that room each night, knowing that there's a murderer pretending to be a rat in the next bed over?"

Draco shrugged weakly. "Honestly? I've spent the last few summer surrounded by completely insane murderers who weren't bothering to hide at all, so having the rat sleeping on Weasley's pillow doesn't really mean much to me."

Harry grimaced. "Well, it means something to me. If this is the guy who betrayed my parents to the Dark Lord..." Harry trailed off, scowling deeply.

"Don't call him that," Draco said suddenly and Harry looked up at him with an obviously confused expression. "Call who, what?"

"The Dark Lord."

"Huh? But that's what  _you_  call him."

"Yeah, but that's... that's  _me_. That's because that's what my father has always called him."

"Wait, so you  _want_  me to use that 'You-Know-Who' rubbish?"

"No, that's not what I meant. I.. you... in my old timeline you were always one of the few people who were... were  _brave_  enough to actually say the name. You... you called him V-voldemort." Draco stuttered over the name and had to swallow the welling terror in his chest as soon as he was done.

"Voldemort?"

Draco nodded, looking a bit ill.

Harry shrugged. "Alright. Yeah, I think I prefer that anyway. He's certainly no Lord of mine," he ended in a low growl and a deep scowl.

"Right," Draco said, nodding, but still looking a little uneasy.

After that the two segued into a conversation about their best options for dealing with the rat. It was an odd experience for Draco since the best figures for seeking help were all the people that his father had complained the most loudly about, or been the most insistent about, over the years, that when Draco got older and found himself in a politically powerful position, that he do everything in his power to avoid, or eventually unseat from their positions of power.

But he was grateful in that regard, that his father had bothered to mention any of these people to him, since he wouldn't have any even the faintest idea where to start, otherwise.


End file.
